Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/336

Rh instead of the record. Gran said he would go back and change it. He had reached the top when there was a loud explosion: large blocks of pumice were hurled out with a big smoke cloud; probably a big bubble had burst. Gran was in the middle of it, heard it gurgle before it burst, saw "blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape like the halves of volcanic bombs, and with bunches of long, drawn-out, hair-like shreds of glass in their interior." This was Pélé's hair. Gran was a bit sick from sulphur dioxide fumes afterwards. They reached Cape Royds on the 16th, the very successful trip taking fifteen days.

Meanwhile Shackleton's old hut was very pleasant at this time of year: in winter it was a bit too draughty. With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot, the beautiful mountains all round us, and the penguins nesting at our door, this was better than the Beardmore Glacier, where we had expected to be at this date. What then must it have been to the six men who were just returned from the very Gate of Hell? And the food: "Truly Shackleton's men must have fed like turkey-cocks from all the delicacies here: boiled chicken, kidneys, mushrooms, ginger. Garibaldi biscuits, soups of all kinds: it is a splendid change. Best of all are the fresh-buttered skua's eggs which we make for breakfast. In fact, life is bearable with all that has been unknown so long at last cleared up, and our anxieties for Campbell's party laid at rest."

For three weeks I worked among the Adélie penguins at Cape Royds, and obtained a complete series of their embryos. It was always Wilson's idea that embryology was the next job of a vertebral zoologist down south. I have already explained that the penguin is an interesting link in the evolutionary chain, and the object of getting this embryo is to find out where the penguins come in. Whether or no they are more primitive than other non-flying birds, such as the apteryx, the ostrich, the rhea and the moa, which last is only just extinct, is an open question. But wingless birds are still hanging on to the promontories of the southern continents, where there is less rivalry than