penguins in place of the two or three thousand birds which the rookery had been found to contain in the “Discovery” days.  Possibly the early date accounted for the absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three of these found their way home to England.  Wilson picked up rounded pieces of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cherishing, fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the Emperor penguin is very strong.

The party killed and skinned three birds and then returned to the shelter of the stone hut, not without difficulty, it is true.  It is worthy of note that the three birds killed by the party were very thickly blubbered, and the oil obtained from them burned well.

The Ross Sea was found to be frozen over as far as the horizon.  When the party got back to their shelter two eggs had burst and saturated Cherry-Garrard’s mitts.  This optimistic young man found good even in this, for he said that on the way home to Cape Evans his mitts thawed out far more easily than Bowers’s did, and attributed the little triumph to the grease in the broken egg!  That night they slept for the first time in the stone hut; perhaps it was fortunate that they did so for it was blowing hard and the wind developed into a terrific storm.

One of the hurricane gusts of wind swept the roof of the hut away, and for two days the unfortunate party lay in their bags half smothered by fine drifting snow.  The second day was Dr. Wilson’s birthday; he told me afterwards that had the gale not abated when it did all three men must have perished.  They had not dared to stir out of the meagre shelter afforded by their sleeping-bags.  Wilson prayed hard that they might be spared.  His prayer was answered, it is true, but before another year had passed two of this courageous little band lost their lives in their eager thirst for scientific knowledge.

When the three men crept out of their bags into the dull winter gloom they groped about and searched for their tent, which had blown away from its pitch near the stone hut.  By an extraordinary piece of good fortune it was recovered, scarcely damaged, a quarter of a mile away.  Cherry-Garrard describes the roar of the wind as it whistled in their shelter to have been just like the rush of an express train through a tunnel.

Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard started home after this, but were caught by another blizzard, which imprisoned them in their tent for another forty-eight hours.  They were now running short of oil for warming and cooking purposes, but the little party won through after a very rough march full of horrible hardships and discomforts, and reached Cape Evans on the 1st August, when they had faced the dreadful winter weather conditions on the cruel Ice Barrier for five weeks.  What forlorn objects they did look:  it was pathetic to see them as they staggered into the hut.  Wilson, when he could give a collected account of what he and his party had faced, was loud in the praise of Birdy and Cherry.