In the evening we passed by a floe on which five large seals lay asleep, and I determined to stop for a short time and take them up. There is no difficulty in killing and obtaining any number of Antarctic seals, no matter how small the floe they are on, provided one approaches them quietly and gets within a range at which they can be picked off rapidly and with certainty one after the other. On this occasion I gave the word to withhold fire till we were close alongside, but Douglas, apparently unable to restrain his impetuosity, fired too soon and succeeded in wounding one, which heaved itself about frantically and startled the others to sudden wakefulness. To make matters worse, Douglas continued firing, and some of them dived into the sea. It is a characteristic of these seals that if wounded they prefer to be on a floe, and all but one came back again, when they were properly dispatched and hoisted aboard for removal of their blubber. The moment they were aboard I set off again, scarcely waiting for the men on the floe, who scrambled up as the ship was moving away. There is a great difference between Arctic and Antarctic seals. In the North the seal has always to be on the look out for the polar bear, and when it comes ashore to sleep does so fitfully, frequently raising its head to look about, and slipping back to the water on the least alarm. Its enemies are above and not below water. The contrary holds in the Antarctic, where the seals are vigorously preyed upon by the killers and sea-leopards. On the surface, however, they have no enemies, and although they take fright if approached quickly or noisily, one can, by moving quietly, get so close to them that they can, if so desired, be clubbed instead of shot. This clubbing should be done with a heavy instrument, such as the loom of an oar, and the point to be aimed at is the nose. If the blow is delivered accurately and with sufficient weight, the seal is immediately rendered unconscious, after which the jugular veins and the main arteries of the neck are severed with a knife, without one of which at his belt no good sailor or explorer goes anywhere. In any case the carcass of the seal should always be thoroughly bled. Another useful instrument by which the animal can be instantaneously killed is an Alpine ice-pick, the point being driven by a smart downward tap through the vault of the skull. This has the disadvantage of destroying the brain, which we always used for cooking, and is, indeed, the greatest dainty provided by these animals. The method of killing seals which we always adopted when we had plenty of ammunition was to shoot them. I always aim at the neck, just behind the skull, where many vital structures are brought into close relationship. Death is instantaneous, bleeding takes place freely, and the brain is not destroyed.