The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard (online e reader .txt) 📗

Emperor and the Adélie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search among the Emperors as being among the most primitive penguins, if not the most primitive of birds now living: hence the Winter Journey. I was glad to get, in addition, this series of Adélie penguins’ embryos, feeling somewhat like a giant who had wandered on to the wrong planet, and who was distinctly in the way of its true inhabitants.

We returned too late to see the eggs laid, and therefore it was impossible to tell how old the embryos were. My hopes rose, however, when I saw some eggless nests with penguins sitting upon them, but later I found that these were used as bachelor quarters by birds whose wives were sitting near. I tried taking eggs from nests and was delighted to find that new eggs appeared: these I carefully marked, and it was not until I opened one two days later to find inside an embryo at least two weeks old, that I realized that penguins added baby-snatching to their other immoralities. Some of those from whom I took eggs sat upon stones of a similar size and shape with every appearance of content: one sat upon the half of the red tin of a Dutch cheese. They are not very intelligent.

All the world loves a penguin: I think it is because in many respects they are like ourselves, and in some respects what we should like to be. Had we but half their physical courage none could stand against us. Had we a hundredth part of their maternal instinct we should have to kill our children by the thousand. Their little bodies are so full of curiosity that they have no room for fear. They like mountaineering, and joyriding on ice-floes: they even like to drill.

One day there had been a blizzard, and lying open to the view of all was a deserted nest, a pile of coveted stones. All the surrounding rookery made their way to and fro, each husband acquiring merit, for, after each journey, he gave his wife a stone. This was the plebeian way of doing things; but my friend who stood, ever so unconcerned, upon a rock knew a trick worth two of that: he and his wife who sat so cosily upon the other side.

The victim was a third penguin. He was without a mate, but this was an opportunity to get one. With all the speed his little legs could compass he ran to and fro, taking stones from the deserted nest, laying them beneath a rock, and hurrying back for more. On that same rock was my friend. When the victim came up with his stone he had his back turned. But as soon as the stone was laid and the other gone for more, he jumped down, seized it with his beak, ran round, gave it to his wife and was back on the rock (with his back turned) before you could say Killer Whale. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, to see where the next stone might be.

I watched this for twenty minutes. All that time, and I do not know for how long before, that wretched bird was bringing stone after stone. And there were no stones there. Once he looked puzzled, looked up and swore at the back of my friend on his rock, but immediately he came back, and he never seemed to think he had better stop. It was getting cold and I went away: he was coming for another.

The life of an Adélie penguin is one of the most unchristian and successful in the world. The penguin which went in for being a true believer would never stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe. Some fifty or sixty agitated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot, peering over the edge, telling one another how nice it will be, and what a good dinner they are going to have. But this is all swank: they are really worried by a horrid suspicion that a sea-leopard is waiting to eat the first to dive. The really noble bird, according to our theories, would say, “I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have died unselfishly, sacrificing my life for my companions”; and in time all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and persuade a companion of weaker mind to plunge: failing this, they hastily pass a conscription act and push him over. And then⁠—bang, helter-skelter, in go all the rest.

They take turns in sitting on their eggs, and after many days the fathers may be seen waddling down towards the sea with their shirtfronts muddied, their long trick done. It may be a fortnight before they return, well-fed, clean, pleased with life, and with a grim determination to relieve their wives, to do their job. Sometimes they are met by others going to bathe. They stop and pass the time of day. Well! Perhaps it would be more pleasant, and what does a day or two matter anyhow. They turn; clean and dirty alike are off to the seaside again. This is when they say, “The women are splendid.”

Life is too strenuous for them to have any use for the virtues of brotherly love, good works, charity and benevolence. When they mate the best thief wins: when they nest the best pair of thieves hatch out their eggs. In a long unbroken stream, which stretches down below the sea-ice horizon, they march in from the open sea. Some are walking on their human feet: others tobogganing upon their shiny white breasts. After their long walk they must have a sleep, and then the gentlemen make their way into the already crowded rookery to find them wives. But first a suitor must find, or steal, a pebble, for such