About eight o'clock I left the ship in a boat, accompanied by Adams and Wild, and we used the hand-lead at frequent intervals until we came to fast ice. This covered the whole of the small bay from the corner of Flagstaff Point (as we afterwards named the seaward cliff at the southern end of Cape Royds) to Cape Barne to the southward. Close up to the Point the ice had broken out, leaving a little natural dock into which we ran the boat, and hundreds of Adelie penguins greeted Adams and me with hoarse squawks of excitement as we landed. I was soon satisfied that Cape Royds would be an excellent place at which to land our stores, and after taking soundings we pulled out towards the ship which had slowly been coming in. We were pulling along at a good rate when suddenly a heavy body shot out of the water, struck the seaman who was pulling stroke, and dropped with a thud to the bottom of the boat. The arrival was an Adelie penguin, which had doubtless thought it was jumping on to a rock, and it would be difficult to say whether the bird or we were the more astonished. By 10 P.M. on February 3, the _Nimrod_ was moored to the bay ice, and as soon as she was secured I went ashore accompanied by Professor David, England, and Dunlop, to choose a place for building the hut, and up a small valley we soon found an ideal spot for our winter quarters. The floor of this valley was almost level and covered with a couple of feet of volcanic earth, and there was room not only for the hut itself, but also for the stores and for a stable for the ponies. A hill behind this valley served as an excellent protection from the prevailing strong south-easterly wind, and a number of seals lying on the bay ice gave promise of a plentiful supply of fresh meat. [Illustration: Adelie Penguins at Cape Royds. (_See page 44_)] With this ideal situation and everything else satisfactory, including a supply of water from a lake right in front of our valley, I decided that we had better start to get our gear ashore at once. CHAPTER VIII THE LANDING OF STORES AND EQUIPMENT We now started upon a fortnight full of more checks and worries than I or any other member of the expedition had ever experienced. Nevertheless, in face of most trying conditions, the whole party turned to late and early with whole-hearted devotion and cheerful readiness. The ponies gave us cause for the most anxiety, because in their half-broken and nervous condition it would have been practically impossible to land them in boats. Finally we decided to build a rough horse-box, get them into this, and then sling it over the side by means of the main gaff. By 3.30 A.M. on the morning of the 6th we had got all the ponies ashore, and they immediately began to paw the snow as they were wont to do in their own far-away Manchurian home.