I9II] 
THE PENGUINS' EGGS 
41 
The three birds that we killed and skinned were very 
thickly blubbered, and the oil we got from them burnt 
very well indeed— and much more fiercely than the seal 
oil. There was about | inch of pure fat under the skin. 
The birds were in excellent plumage. Bowers noticed 
there was very little soiled sea ice where they were 
standing, which also supports the idea of a very recent 
arrival, or recent freezing of the bay ice, or both. 
There was another small group of Emperors wandering 
by the ice foot down which we came, but none of them 
had eggs. We saw no others. 
The sea was frozen over as far as the horizon. 
There was a little evidence of pressure in cracks of the sea 
ice in the bay. Our visit was a very hurried one, unfor- 
tunately, owing to the shortness of the light and the risk 
of getting benighted in the pressure ridges. Subsequent 
events unfortunately made another visit impossible. 
[We legged it back as hard as we could go, two eggs 
each in our fur mits ; Birdie with two skins tied on 
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. Bill said with infinite patience, 
* Cherry, you must learn how to use an ice-axe.^ For 
the rest of the trip my windclothes were in rags. 
We found the sledge, and none too soon. We had 
four eggs left, more or less whole. Both mine had burst 
in my mits : the first I emptied out, the second I left 
