THE WINTER JOURNEY 285 
thing not quite of the earth. And we dug it in as tent was 
never dug in before; not by the igloo, but in the old place 
farther down where we had first arrived. And while Bill 
was doing this Birdie and I went back to the igloo and dug 
and scratched and shook away the drift inside until we had 
found nearly all our gear. It is wonderful how little we 
lost when the roof went. Most of our gear was hung on 
the sledge, which was part of the roof, or was packed into 
the holes of the hut to try and make it drift-proof, and the 
things must have been blown inwards into the bottom of 
the hut by the wind from the south and the back draught 
from the north. Then they were all drifted up. Of course 
a certain number of mitts and socks were blown away and 
lost, but the only important things were Bill’s fur mitts, 
which were stuffed into a hole in the rocks of the hut. 
We loaded up the sledge and pushed it down the slope. 
I don’t know how Birdie was feeling, but I felt so weak 
that it was the greatest labour. The blizzard looked right 
on top of us. 
We had another meal, and we wanted it: and as the 
good hoosh ran down into our feet and hands, and up into 
our cheeks and ears and brains, we discussed what we 
would do next. Birdie was all for another go at the 
Emperor penguins. Dear Birdie, he never would admit 
that he was beaten—I don’t know that he ever really was ! 
“T think he (Wilson) thought he had landed us in a bad 
corner and was determined to go straight home, though I 
was for one other tap at the Rookery. However, I had 
placed myself under his orders for this trip voluntarily, and 
so we started the next day for home.””! There could really 
be no common-sense doubt: we had to go back, and we 
were already very doubtful whether we should ever man- 
age to get into our sleeping-bags in very low temperature, 
so ghastly had they become. 
I don’t know when it was, but I remember walking 
down that slope—I don’t know why, perhaps to try and 
find the bottom of the cooker—and thinking that there 
was nothing on earth that a man under such circum- 
1 Bowers. 
