Now we had reached the Barrier face some five miles east of the point at
which it joins the basalt cliffs of Cape Crozier. We could see the great
pressure waves which had proved such an obstacle to travellers from the
Discovery to the Emperor penguin rookery. The Knoll was clear, but the
summit of Mount Terror was in the clouds. As for the Barrier we seemed to
have known it all our lives, it was so exactly like what we had imagined
it to be, and seen in the pictures and photographs.

Scott had a whaler launched, and we pulled in under the cliffs. There was
a considerable swell.

"We were to examine the possibilities of landing, but the swell was so
heavy in its break among the floating blocks of ice along the actual
beach and ice foot that a landing was out of the question. We should
have broken up the boat and have all been in the water together. But I
assure you it was tantalizing to me, for there about six feet above us on
a small dirty piece of the old bay ice about ten feet square one living
Emperor penguin chick was standing disconsolately stranded, and close by
stood one faithful old Emperor parent asleep. This young Emperor was
still in the down, a most interesting fact in the bird's life history at
which we had rightly guessed, but which no one had actually observed
before. It was in a stage never yet seen or collected, for the wings were
already quite clean of down and feathered as in the adult, also a line
down the breast was shed of down and part of the head. This bird would
have been a treasure to me, but we could not risk life for it, so it had
to remain where it was. It was a curious fact that with as much clean ice
to live on as they could have wished for, these destitute derelicts of a
flourishing colony, now gone north to sea on floating bay ice, should
have preferred to remain standing on the only piece of bay ice left, a