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.

[Illustration: EMPERORS BARRIER AND SEA ICE--E. A. Wilson, del.]

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 maternal side seems to have necessarily swamped the other
functions of life. Such is the struggle for existence that they can only
live by a glut of maternity, and it would be interesting to know whether
such a life leads to happiness or satisfaction.

I have told[156] how the men of the Discovery found this rookery where we
now stood. How they made journeys in the early spring but never arrived
early enough to get eggs and only found parents and chicks. They
concluded that the Emperor was an impossible kind of bird who, for some
reason or other, nests in the middle of the Antarctic winter with the
temperature anywhere below seventy degrees of frost, and the blizzards
blowing, always blowing, against his devoted back. And they found him
holding his precious chick balanced upon his big feet, and pressing it
maternally, or paternally (for both sexes squabble for the privilege)
against a bald patch in his breast. And when at last he simply must go
and eat something in the open leads near by, he just puts the child down
on the ice, and twenty chickless Emperors rush to pick it up. And they
fight over it, and so tear it that sometimes it will die. And, if it can,
it will crawl into any ice-crack to escape from so much kindness, and
there it will freeze. Likewise many broken and addled eggs were found,
and it is clear that the mortality is very great. But some survive, and
summer comes; and when a big blizzard is going to blow (they know all
about the weather), the parents take the children out for miles across
the sea-ice, until they reach the threshold of the open sea. And there
they sit until the wind