This is an island where a marooned or shipwrecked party might live in comparative comfort. Instinctively, whilst taking in all its possibilities, my mind reverted to Elephant Island, the grim and barren spot where I wintered with my party during the last Antarctic expedition, short of food and fuel, bitterly cold and devoid of everything that makes life endurable. Here there is abundance of food and plenty of wood to burn, drift wood from the beach and the island tree wood. In addition to the animal life we saw about us, the sea swarms with fish of excellent quality, and crayfish can be easily caught from the rocks. There are also large rookeries of rockhopper penguins (as we saw later) which provide good meat and in the season abundance of eggs. Small weather-proof dwellings of the type used on Tristan da Cunha could be built from the numerous small boulders on the beach and roofed over with tussock grass. True, too long a sojourn might produce some of the disquietude of Alexander Selkirk, but there would at least be no fear of starvation, and compared with Elephant Island the place is a perfect paradise. I returned to the landing-place, and with McIlroy and Kerr put off in the boat and rowed into the belt of kelp where I was anxious to see what kinds of fish could be caught about the island. It was unnecessary to bait the hooks, a spinner bait or bright piece of tin was sufficient. The fish bit readily and we quickly collected all we required for food. The variety found in the kelp and about the shore is a reddish-coloured fish with strong horny spines. It is excellent to eat. From the ship with strong lines and hooks we caught “blue-fish” weighing up to forty pounds, which also make good eating. Watts and Green, who are tireless disciples of Izaak Walton, were responsible for many of these catches. Crayfish were obtained by lowering a weighted net baited with fish. Usually we hauled this up full of them with others clinging to the outside. They were to us a great delicacy. In the afternoon Worsley and Jeffrey, with the assistance of Dell and Ross, carried out a series of soundings from the boat with a view to charting accurately the anchorage. Later they went ashore and measured the height of Archway Rock. I sent in the boat to be put ashore three of the geese which we had brought from Tristan da Cunha. As the boat neared the beach they did not wait to be lifted out, but jumped over the gunwale into the water. They swam round the Archway Rock and made a landing at the foot of the small glen which opens to the sea there. We did not see them again, but I was in hopes that they would settle and breed.