For a long time the penguins at their nests had satisfied their thirst by eating the snow near them, but as this disappeared, they suffered greatly, as was made evident by the way they lay with beaks open and tongues exposed between them. (Fig. 30.) As time went on the cocks started to make short journeys to the drifts which still remained in order to quench their thirst, but the hens stuck manfully, or rather "henfully" to their posts, though some of them seemed much distressed. Later, those cocks which had nested in the centre of the rookery had quite long journeys to make in order to find drifts, a very popular resort being that which had formed in the lee of our hut, and all day streams of them came here to gobble snow. Once a cock was seen to take a lump of snow in his beak and carry it to his mate on the nest, who ate it. Mr. Priestley tells me that when he was at Cape Royds in 1908 he saw cocks taking snow to hens on their nests. This procedure would seem to be different to the parental instinct which governs the feeding of the young, and it seemed to show that the cock realized that the hen must be thirsty and in need of the snow, and kept this fact in mind when he was away from her. Another point to note is that the occurrence was a very rare and, in fact, exceptional one. When conditions arose which were new to their experience the penguins seemed utterly unable to grasp them. As an example of this, we had rigged a guide rope from our hut to the meteorological screen, about fifty yards away, to guide us during blizzards. This rope, which was supported by poles driven into the ground, sagged in one place till it nearly touched the ground. At frequent intervals, penguins on their way past the hut were brought to a standstill by running their breasts into this sagged rope, and each bird as it was caught invariably went through the same ridiculous procedure. First it would push hard against the rope, then finding this of no avail, back a few steps, walk up to it again and have another push, repeating the process several times. After this, instead of going a few feet further along where it could easily walk under the rope, in ninety per cent. of cases it would turn, and by a wide detour walk right round the hut the other way, evidently convinced that some unknown obstacle completely barred its passage on that side. This spectacle was a continual source of amusement to us as it went on all day and every day for some time. [Illustration: Fig. 37. A Nest on a Rock (See page 71)] [Illustration: Fig. 38. "One after another, the rest of the Party followed him" (Page 75)]