THE WINTER JOURNEY 271 
and Birdie picked up eggs to find them lumps of ice, 
rounded and about the right size, dirty and hard. Once 
a bird dropped an ice nest egg as they watched, and again 
a bird returned and tucked another into itself, immediately 
forsaking it for a real one, however, when one was offered. 
Meanwhile a whole procession of Emperors came 
round under the cliff on which I stood. The light was 
already very bad and it was well that my companions were 
quick in returning: we had to do everything in a great 
hurry. I hauled up the eggs in their mitts (which we 
fastened together round our necks with lampwick lan- 
yards) and then the skins, but failed to help Bill at all. 
“Pull,” he cried, from the bottom: “I am pulling,” I 
said. “‘ But the line’s quite slack down here,” he shouted. 
And when he had reached the top by climbing up on 
Bowers’ shoulders, and we were both pulling all we knew 
Birdie’s end of the rope was still slack in his hands. 
Directly we put on a strain the rope cut into the ice edge 
and jammed—a very common difficulty when working 
among crevasses. Wetried to run the rope over an ice- 
axe without success, and things began to look serious when 
Birdie, who had been running about prospecting and had 
meanwhile put one leg through a crack into the sea, found 
a place where the cliff did not overhang. He cut steps for 
himself, we hauled, and at last we were all together on the 
top—his foot being by now surrounded by a solid mass of 
iGe. 
We legged it back as hard as we could go: five eggs 
in our fur mitts, Birdie with two skins tied to him and 
trailing behind, and myself with one. We were roped up, 
and climbing the ridges and getting through the holes was 
very difficult. In one place where there was a steep rubble 
and snow slope down I left the ice-axe half way up ; in 
another it was too dark to see our former ice-axe footsteps, 
and I could see nothing, and so just let myself go and 
trusted to luck. With infinite patience Bill said: ‘‘ Cherry, 
you must learn how to use an ice-axe.”’ For the rest of the 
trip my wind-clothes were in rags. 
We found the sledge, and none too soon, and now had 
