ir already partially digested catch themselves. The more robust of the
young thus worried an adult until, because of his importunity, he was
fed. But with the less robust a much more pathetic ending was the rule. A
chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for life, starving and
weak, and getting daily weaker because it could not run fast enough to
insist on being fed, again and again ran off pursuing with the rest.
Again and again it stumbled and fell, persistently whining out its hunger
in a shrill and melancholy pipe, till at last the race was given up.
Forced thus by sheer exhaustion to stop and rest, it had no chance of
getting food. Each hurrying parent with its little following of hungry
chicks, intent on one thing only, rushed quickly by, and the starveling
dropped behind to gather strength for one more effort. Again it fails, a
robuster bird has forced the pace, and again success is wanting to the
runt. Sleepily it stands there, with half-shut eyes, in a torpor
resulting from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all
the bustle round it means, a little dirty, dishevelled dot, in the race
for life a failure, deserted by its parents, who have hunted vainly for
their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched it, but from
which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to
everything around, till a skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with
a few strong, vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life."[358]

There is a great deal to be said for this kind of treatment. The Adelie
penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one. Why not kill
off the unfit right away, before they have had time to breed, almost
before they have had time to eat? Life is a stern business in any case:
why pretend that it is anything else? Or that any but the best can
survive at all? And in consequence, I challenge you to find a more jolly,
happy, healthy lot of old gentlemen in the world. We _must_ admire them:
if only because they are so much nicer than ourselves! But it is grim:
Nature is an uncompromising nurse.

Nature was going to give us a bad time too if we were not relieved, and
on January 17, as there were still no signs of the ship, it was decided
to prepare for another winter. We were to go on rations; to cook with
oil, for nearly all the coal was gone; to kill and store up seal. On
January 18 we started our preparations, digging a cave to store more
meat, and