268 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
Excited by now, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves, we 
found the way ahead easier, until the penguins’ call reached 
us again and westood, three crystallized ragamufhns, above 
the Emperors’ home. They were there all right, and we 
were going to reach them, but where were all the thousands 
of which we had heard? 
We stood on an ice-foot which was really a dwarf cliff 
some twelve feet high, and the sea-ice, with a good many 
ice-blocks strewn upon it, lay below. The cliff dropped 
straight, with a bit of an overhang and no snow-drift. This 
may have been because the sea had only frozen recently ; 
whatever the reason may have been it meant that we should 
have a lot of difficulty in getting up again without help. 
It was decided that some one must stop on the top with 
the Alpine rope, and clearly that one should be I, for 
with short sight and fogged spectacles which I could not 
wear I was much the least useful of the party for the job 
immediately ahead. Had we had the sledge we could have 
used it as a ladder, but of course we had left this at the 
beginning of the moraine miles back. 
We saw the Emperors standing all together huddled 
under the Barrier cliff some hundreds of yards away. The 
little light was going fast: we were much more excited 
about the approach of complete darkness and the look of 
wind in the south than we were about our triumph. After 
indescribable effort and hardship we were witnessing a 
marvel of the natural world, and we were the first and only 
men who had ever done so; we had within our grasp 
material which might prove of the utmost importance to 
science; we were turning theories into facts with every 
observation we made,—and we had but a moment to give. 
The disturbed Emperors made a tremendous row, 
trumpeting with their curious metallic voices. There was 
no doubt they had eggs, for they tried to shuffle along 
the ground without losing them off their feet. But when 
they were hustled a good many eggs were dropped and left 
lying on the ice, and some of these were quickly picked 
up by eggless Emperors who had probably been waiting 
a long time for the opportunity. In these poor birds the 
