piece about ten feet square and now pressed up six feet above water
level, evidently wondering why it was so long in starting north with the
general exodus which must have taken place just a month ago. The whole
incident was most interesting and full of suggestion as to the slow
working of the brain of these queer people. Another point was most weird
to see, that on the _under_ side of this very dirty piece of sea-ice,
which was about two feet thick and which hung over the water as a sort of
cave, we could see the legs and lower halves of dead Emperor chicks
hanging through, and even in one place a dead adult. I hope to make a
picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a corner crammed full of
Imperial history in the light of what we already knew, and it would
otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any group of animate or
inanimate nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more light
on the life history of this strangely primitive bird....

"We were joking in the boat as we rowed under these cliffs and saying it
would be a short-lived amusement to see the overhanging cliff part
company and fall on us. So we were glad to find that we were rowing back
to the ship and already 200 or 300 yards away from the place and in open
water when there was a noise like crackling thunder and a huge plunge
into the sea and a smother of rock dust like the smoke of an explosion,
and we realized that the very thing had happened which we had just been
talking about. Altogether it was a very exciting row, for before we got
on board we had the pleasure of seeing the ship shoved in so close to
these cliffs by a belt of heavy pack ice that to us it appeared a toss-up
whether she got out again or got forced in against the rocks. She had no
time or room to turn, and got clear by backing out through the belt of
pack stern first, getting heavy bumps under the counter and on the rudder
as she did so, for the ice was heavy and the swell considerable."[87]