It is clear then that the Adelie penguin will show a certain spirit of selfishness in tackling his hereditary enemies.  But when it comes to the danger of which he is ignorant his courage betrays want of caution.  Meares and Dimitri exercised the dog-teams out upon the larger floes when we were held up for any length of time.  One day a team was tethered by the side of the ship, and a penguin sighted them and hurried from afar off.  The dogs became frantic with excitement as he neared them:  he supposed it was a greeting, and the louder they barked and the more they strained at their ropes, the faster he bustled to meet them.  He was extremely angry with a man who went and saved him from a very sudden end, clinging to his trousers with his beak, and furiously beating his shins with his flippers.  It was not an uncommon sight to see a little Adelie penguin standing within a few inches of the nose of a dog which was almost frantic with desire and passion.

The pack-ice is the home of the immature penguins, both Emperor and Adelie.  But we did not see any large numbers of immature Emperors during this voyage.

We soon became acquainted with the sea-leopard, which waits under the ice-foot for the little penguins; he is a brute, but sinuous and graceful as the seal world goes.  He preys especially upon the Adelie penguin, and Levick found no less than eighteen penguins, together with the remains of many others, in the stomach of one sea-leopard.  In the water the leopard seems “a trifle faster than the Adelies, as one of them occasionally would catch up with one of the fugitives, who then, realizing that speed alone would not avail him, started dodging from side to side, and sometimes swam rapidly round and round in a circle of about twelve feet diameter for a full minute or more, doubtless knowing that he was quicker in turning than his great heavy pursuer, but exhaustion would overtake him in the end, and we could see the head and jaws of the great sea-leopard rise to the surface as he grabbed his victim.  The sight of a panic-stricken little Adelie tearing round and round in this manner was sadly common late in the season."[60]

Fish and small seal have also been found in its stomach.  With long powerful head and neck and a sinuous body, it is equipped with most formidable teeth with which it tears strips out of the still living birds, and flippers which are adapted entirely for speed in the water.  It is a solitary animal with a large range of distribution.  It has been supposed to bring forth its young in the pack, but nothing definite is known on this subject.  One day we saw a big sea-leopard swimming along with the ship.  He dived under the floes and reappeared from floe to floe as we went, and for a time we thought he was interested in us.  But soon we sighted another lying away on a floe, and our friend in the water began to rear his head up perpendicularly, and seemed to be trying to wind his mate, as we supposed.  He was down wind from her, and appeared to find her at a distance of 150 to 200 yards, and the last we saw of him he was heading up the side of the floe where she lay.