In perfect weather a small party set off in the launch towards a large grounded berg which appeared to lie under the ice-cliffs. Approaching it closely, after covering two miles, we could see that it was still more than a mile to the rocks.
Penguins soon began to splash around; Wilson petrels came glancing overhead and we could descry great flocks of Antarctic petrels wheeling over cliff and sea. Reefs buried in frothing surge showed their glistening mantles, and the boat swerved to avoid floating streamers of brash-ice.
The rocky cliffs, about eighty feet in height at the highest point, were formed of vertically lying slate rocks—a very uniform series of phyllite and sericite-schist. At their base lay great clinging blocks of ice deeply excavated by the restless swell. One island was separated from the parent mass by a channel cut sheer to the deep blue water. Behind the main rocks and indenting the ice-cliff was a curving bay into which we steered, finding at its head a beautiful cove fringed with a heavy undermined ice-foot and swarming with Adelie penguins. Overhanging the water was a cavern hollowed out of a bridge of ice thrown from the glacier to the western limit of the rock outcrop.
Hurley had before him a picture in perfect proportion. The steel-blue water, paled by an icy reflection, a margin of brown rocks on which the penguins leapt through the splashing surf, a curving canopy of ice-foot and, filling the background, the cavern with pendent icicles along its cornice.
The swell was so great that an anchor had to be thrown from the stern to keep the launch off shore, and two men remained on board to see that no damage was done.
At last we were free to roam and explore. Over the first ridge of rocks we walked suddenly into the home of the Antarctic petrels! There had always been much speculation as to where these birds nested. Jones' party at our western base had the previous summer at Haswell Island happened upon the first rookery of Antarctic petrels ever discovered. Here was another spot in the great wilderness peopled by their thousands. Every available nook and crevice was occupied along a wide slope which shelved away until it met the vertical cliffs falling to the ocean. One could sit down among the soft, mild birds who were fearless at the approach of man. They rested in pairs close to their eggs laid on the bare rock or among fragments of slate loosely arranged to resemble a rest. Many eggs were collected, and the birds, losing confidence in us, rose into the air in flocks, gaining in feathered volume as they circled in fear above this domain of rock and snow which had been theirs for generations.
In adjoining rookeries the Adelie penguins, with their fat, downy cheeks, were very plentiful and fiercer than usual. Skuas, snow and Wilson petrels were all in their accustomed haunts. Down on the low ice-foot at the mouth of a rocky ravine, a few seals had effected a landing. Algae, mosses and lichens made quite a display in moist localities.
Before leaving for the ship, we "boiled the billy" on a platform of slate near the cove where the launch was anchored and had a small picnic, entertained by the penguins playing about in the surf or scaling the ice-foot to join the birds which were laboriously climbing to the rookeries on the ridge. The afternoon was so peaceful and the calm hot weather such a novelty to us that we pushed off reluctantly to the 'Aurora' after an eventful day.
Those on board had had a busy time dredging, and their results were just as successful as ours. A haul was made in two hundred and fifty fathoms of ascidians, sponges, crinoids, holothurians, fish and other forms of life in such quantity that Hunter and Hamilton were occupied in sorting the specimens until five o'clock next morning. Meanwhile the 'Aurora' had returned to her old anchorage close to Cape Denison.
The sky banked up from the south with nimbus, and early on the 23rd a strong breeze ruffled the water. There were a few things to be brought off from the shore, while Ainsworth, Sandell and Correll were still at the Hut, so that, as the weather conditions pointed to a coming blizzard, I decided to "cut the painter" with the land.