[Illustration:  A PROCESSION OF EMPERORS]

[Illustration:  THE KNOLL BEHIND THE CLIFFS OF CAPE CROZIER]

We blundered along until we got into a great cul-de-sac which probably formed the end of the two ridges, where they butted on to the sea-ice.  On all sides rose great walls of battered ice with steep snow-slopes in the middle, where we slithered about and blundered into crevasses.  To the left rose the huge cliff of Cape Crozier, but we could not tell whether there were not two or three pressure ridges between us and it, and though we tried at least four ways, there was no possibility of getting forward.

And then we heard the Emperors calling.

Their cries came to us from the sea-ice we could not see, but which must have been a chaotic quarter of a mile away.  They came echoing back from the cliffs, as we stood helpless and tantalized.  We listened and realized that there was nothing for it but to return, for the little light which now came in the middle of the day was going fast, and to be caught in absolute darkness there was a horrible idea.  We started back on our tracks and almost immediately I lost my footing and rolled down a slope into a crevasse.  Birdie and Bill kept their balance and I clambered back to them.  The tracks were very faint and we soon began to lose them.  Birdie was the best man at following tracks that I have ever known, and he found them time after time.  But at last even he lost them altogether and we settled we must just go ahead.  As a matter of fact, we picked them up again, and by then were out of the worst:  but we were glad to see the tent.

The next morning (Thursday, June 20) we started work on the igloo at 3 A.M. and managed to get the canvas roof on in spite of a wind which harried us all that day.  Little did we think what that roof had in store for us as we packed it in with snow blocks, stretching it over our second sledge, which we put athwartships across the middle of the longer walls.  The windward (south) end came right down to the ground and we tied it securely to rocks before packing it in.  On the other three sides we had a good two feet or more of slack all round, and in every case we tied it to rocks by lanyards at intervals of two feet.  The door was the difficulty, and for the present we left the cloth arching over the stones, forming a kind of portico.  The whole was well packed in and over with slabs of hard snow, but there was no soft snow with which to fill up the gaps between the blocks.  However, we felt already that nothing could drag that roof out of its packing, and subsequent events proved that we were right.

It was a bleak job for three o’clock in the morning before breakfast, and we were glad to get back to the tent and a meal, for we meant to have another go at the Emperors that day.  With the first glimpse of light we were off for the rookery again.