Far beyond the roaring track of the homeward-bound merchantman, lie in the South Pacific the grim clusters of salt-whitened marked on the chart as the South Shetlands. Many years have come and gone since their hungry shores were busy with the labours of the sealers, that, disdainful of the terrors of snow-laden and spindrift-burdened air, amid the Antarctic weather to fill their holds with the garments of the sea-folk. Then, after incredible, the adventurers would return to port, and waste in a week of the fruit of their , forgetful of crashing or sea, frozen limbs or hunger pains. When all was spent they would return, forgetting their and upon the innocent seal all the rage of regret that would rise within them. They spared none—bull, cow, and alike were , as if in pure of , until the helplessness of utter compelled them to desist and snatch an of death-like sleep, of all the grinding bitterness of their surroundings. Life was held cheap among them, a consequence, not to be wondered at, of its hardness and the want of all those things that make life desirable. And yet the stern existence had its own strong for those who had become to it. Few[314] of them ever gave it up voluntarily, ending their stormy life-struggle in some sudden ghastly fashion and being almost immediately forgotten. Occasionally some sorely-maimed man would survive the horrors of his disablement, lying in the fetid forecastle in endurance until the reached a port whence he could be transferred to . But these unhappy men grievously for the vast openness of the Antarctic, the gnashing of the ice-fangs upon the black rocks, the unsatisfied roar of the western gale, and the ceaseless combat with the sea.  
Many years came and went while the Southern sealer his trade, until at last none of the reckless skippers could longer disguise from themselves the fact that their harvest fields were rapidly becoming completely barren. Few and far between were the islets frequented by the seals, the majority of the old grounds being quite abandoned. One by one the dejected fishermen gave up the attempt, until in due time those gaunt fastnesses resumed their loneliness. The long, long tempest roared questioningly over the islands, as if calling for its vanished children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not. Years passed in , but for the busy sea-fowl, who, because they had no commercial value, were left unmolested to eat their fill of the sea’s rich harvest, and rear among the rock-crannies their broods. At last, out of the midst of a blinding of snow, there appeared one day off the most southerly outlier of the South Shetlands a little[315] group of round heads staring with wide, humid eyes at the surf-lashed of the shore. Long and they reconnoitred, for although many generations had passed since their kind had been driven from those seas, the memory of those pitiless days had been so transmitted through the race that it had become a part of themselves, an instinct infallible as any other they . No enemy appearing, they gradually drew nearer and nearer, until their leader, a fine bull seal of four seasons, took his courage in both flippers and mounted the most slope, emerging from the breakers , and immediately becoming a hirpling heap of clumsiness that bore no to the , creature of a few moments before. Obediently his flock followed him until they reached a little patch of hard smooth sand sheltered by a semi-circle of great wave-worn , and admirably suited to their purpose. Here, with vigilance of sentinels, they rested, rather brokenly at first, as every incursion of the indignant sea-fowl startled them, but presently into ungainly attitudes of .
 
Whence they had come was as great a mystery as all the deep-water ways of the sea-people must ever be to man, or how many halting-places they must have visited and rejected at the bidding of their unerring instinct warning them that the arch-destroyers’ visits were to be feared. Ho............