y, at Hut Point, walking over that beastly,
slippery, sloping ice-foot which I always imagined would leave me some
day in the sea, Bill asked me whether I would go with him--and who else
for a third? There can have been little doubt whom we both wanted, and
that evening Bowers had been asked. Of course he was mad to come. And
here we were. "This winter travel is a new and bold venture," wrote Scott
in the hut that night, "but the right men have gone to attempt it."
I don't know. There never could have been any doubt about Bill and
Birdie. Probably Lashly would have made the best third, but Bill had a
prejudice against seamen for a journey like this--"They don't take enough
care of themselves, and they _will_ not look after their clothes." But
Lashly was wonderful--if Scott had only taken a four-man party and Lashly
to the Pole!
What is this venture? Why is the embryo of the Emperor penguin so
important to Science? And why should three sane and common-sense
explorers be sledging away on a winter's night to a Cape which has only
been visited before in daylight, and then with very great difficulty?
I have explained more fully in the Introduction to this book[150] the
knowledge the world possessed at this time of the Emperor penguin, mainly
due to Wilson. But it is because the Emperor is probably the most
primitive bird in existence that the working out of his embryology is so
important. The embryo shows remains of the development of an animal in
former ages and former states; it recapitulates its former lives. The
embryo of an Emperor may prove the missing link between birds and the
reptiles from which birds have sprung.
Only one rookery of Emperor penguins had been found at this date, and
this was on the sea-ice inside a little bay of the Barrier edge at Cape
Crozier, which was guarded by miles of some of the biggest pressure in
the Antarctic. Chicks had been found in September, and Wilson reckoned
that the eggs must be laid in the beginning of July. And so we started
just after midwinter on the weirdest bird's-nesting expedition that has
ever been or ever will be.
[Illustration: EMPERORS]
But the sweat was freezing in our clothing and we moved on. All we could
see was a black patch away to our left which was Turk's Head: when this
disappeared we knew that we had passed Glacier Tongue which, unseen by
us, eclipsed the rocks behind. And then we camped for lunch.
That first camp only lives in my memory because
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