Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

them off the ship, into the launch and away ashore and Dr Fuchs, who had
remained on board, gave us the other news. The Bosun had been drinking
heavily, and had a black prostitute in his cabin, a Canadian stowaway had been
thrown off the ship and various attempts had been made by the locals to steal
equipment - they were partially successful having been over the ground earlier
in the day. So to bed at 3.30 am after a cold shower.
On New Year's Day I was up at 6 o’clock and climbed up to the crow's nest
to demonstrate that I had no hangover and look at the view. The island ranges
are divided by a valley, which runs from the southwest part of Porte Grande,
the sound in which we were anchored. To the south where the valley begins
was a flat, sandy plain with a surprisingly thick growth of palms and scrub.
Otherwise, apart from small green tamarisk shrubs the island appeared to be
completely barren. The rainfall was very sparse and erratic and all the water
had to be shipped over the channel from a permanent spring on Sao Antao. The
highest point on the island is Monte Verde (which is brown!) rising to 2539 ft. in
the northeast. To the east was a series of brown, barren ridges, crowned by
Vigia (Vulture), a peak with a twin crag summit and a seemingly permanent
cloud banner. The sun rose from behind it, lighting up the Ilhe dos Passaros,
with its conspicuous white steps and the high ridges to our west - with a profile
like a human face in profile - said to be Napoleon's.
Jumbo (Nicols) had put a shark line out, though without catching any; the
‘Carlton’ had caught several sharks and an octopus. We saw its crew throw the
Canadian stowaway overboard, but he did not attract the attention of sharks;
perhaps they had caught them all. The only birds I saw were the brown boobies,
which were fairly numerous and kites, which took scraps from the water. The
bumboat boys came out again and I bartered some of our foul scotch flake
tobacco for a straw hat, some sea-shells and oranges. We also got a few stalks of
bananas. In trading we cut the bumboats down to a quarter of the starting price
and then beat them down a bit lower. Ken, Bill and I chartered one of the boats
to row us about a hundred yards away from the ship so that we could take
some photographs; to our surprise the ‘Biscoe’ looked very handsome. Just
before leaving in the afternoon a large school of scombrids (like mackerel)
skipped across the surface of the water, looking almost like flying fish; a shark
may have been chasing them. We heard that a native diver was killed yesterday
by a ‘blanket fish’ (manta ray), but that sounded improbable.
The ship weighed anchor and left Porto Grande at 2 o’clock. At sea again a
school of dolphins accompanied us for some time. There were two species: a
large grey-green-black animal with white underside, mottled flanks, blackish
flippers and a longish snout. It may have been. The other, much smaller, was
the bottle-nosed dolphin. The former was leaping erratically, up to five feet out
of the water. Flying-fish were very abundant and I noticed that the pectoral fins
seemed much darker than those we had met further north. Two large petrels
were flying about 200 yards abeam, possibly Madeiran little-shearwaters. After
dark, while reading on the after deck, a shout from Derek indicated something
exciting. A small bird had flown onto him as he lay in his sleeping bag under
the after lifeboat. We captured it and were able to look it up and identify it as a
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