Their home was a land of eternal wind and cold. All through the savage Antarctica winter the penguins had huddled together on the pack ice, heads down, eyes closed, their bodies pressed close for warmth, bravely enduring the blizzard which blew continuously during the month’s-long night.

And then, at last, the sun had come again, and had brought with it one of those still, bright mornings, rare in the Antarctic, when the polar world stood revealed in glittering, unearthly beauty.

It was then that they heard the Voice.

“Away, away South,” it cried, and the penguins in their thousands, without a thought of disobedience, leapt into the icy waters and for many days and nights swam on until, in the thin light of the summer morning, a low, pebbled shore came into view.

The penguins jostled in hundreds on the stony beach, and then waddled off, each eager to find a mate and secure a favorable place in the rookery.  Those who came early would get the sheltered spots; late comers would have to make do with a windy height, all the lower slopes, which the spring thaw would make slushy and wet.

But one of them, a handsome young male, had important business to do first. His sharp eyes darted here and there until he found what he sought, a smooth, beautifully rounded pebble of a pale slate color. Carrying it carefully in his beak, he set off towards the rookery.

Upon the higher slopes a little group of disgruntled bachelors were paying court to a graceful young female, who eyed them disdainfully. They had no way of winning her favor, for having come without pebbles, they could offer no proof of their capabilities as protectors or providers.

But the handsome penguin was not disconcerted by her coolness. Pushing his way gently forward, he laid his talisman at the feet of the little henbird, who rolled the stone this way and that with her beak, as though trying to determine its shape and quality.  Rejoicing that his gift had been favorably received, he moved nearer and stretched out his neck to caress that of his new bride.

The two birds waddled together over to a spot where the shale was loose.  Together they scooped out a hollow with their strong, leathery feet, and placed the love-pebble on the edge, the cornerstone of their new home.

To the male penguin fell the responsibility of gathering the rest of the pebbles, and it was hard, difficult work for him on his small, stumpy legs, although he labored industriously.  His mate guarded the hollow jealously, for had she left the rudimentary nest even for a minute, other penguins would have stolen the precious pebbles.

Little by little the nest took shape, a raised ring of stones, meagre enough, but sufficient to give the henbird a fraction of shelter for her important task.

Some waxed apace, and in due course two eggs appeared in the hollow, hardly distinguishable from the stones themselves.

The greedy skua gulls wheeled overhead screaming, ready to pounce at any time, but one of the two penguins watched over the eggs with unremitting care whilst the other was away gathering food. Life in the rookery was grim, needing constant vigilance.

But troubles were only just beginning for the two penguins, for when at last the chicks hatched out, twin pyramids of fine black down, the skua gulls became all the more menacing. One of the parent penguins always had to watch over the chicks in case the predators swooped, yet all the time the youngsters grew so quickly that it was impossible for only one parent to feed them.

Many of the other parents in the rookery were faced with the same problem, and the smallest, mostly weakly offspring, once left on their own, soon became the victims of the gulls. And finally our couple were driven by necessity to go together in search of food, leaving their chicks in the perilous custody of other penguins, but somehow they knew that their young would survive. They were becoming fine, big glossy birds now, two big for the gulls to attack.

Then one day disaster struck. The handsome penguin had his mate were searching together for the red shrimps which, with the other small sea creatures, constitute the food of penguins, when the female was seized by sea leopard. The male never saw her again. He returned to the mainland disconsolate, forgetting in his misery the food so eagerly awaited by the voracious chicks. But he was not allowed to mourn long. The chicks’ angry squawks and ever-open bills gave him no rest, and sent him scuttling beachwards again and again as he now played the role of sole provider for the young birds.

As they rapidly approached maturity, he was at last the able to chivvy them down the short distance to the shore, where they were soon crowded into the water by the other birds.

Many were the games they played in the low, golden light while the sun tumbled all around the skyline and rainbow aurorae flickered in the sky. But summer drew towards its close all too soon. Colder winds blew, and the clouds of winter began to thicken in the skies once more.

A great assembly of birds, among them the handsome penguin and his two sons, gathered on the beach. It seemed some sign was awaited, but how it was given none knew. In a flash, thousands of penguins had slipped into the water to begin the long journey home, a home the youngsters had never seen, yet they moved toward of the floating ice which fringes the shores of that loneliness of continents with instinctive certainty.

At last, with the first blizzards of the autumn, the pack ice was reached, and the penguins crowded thankfully aboard, huddling together for warmth and protection.

As he rested their, in his slow animal fashion our penguin thought of the golden days he had spent with his mate, days when the abundance of the sea had made each day a feast day, when great bergs sailed by, blue and emerald and the towering ice cliffs cracked in the cool summer sun. All these things he remembered, but he grieved for his mate no more, for her living spirit was made flesh in the body of his two sons.

Whence came the voice which called to him each year, he asked himself? Was it murmured by the unfrozen sea, or rattled by the shifting on ice, or was it blown through the great horns of the wind itself? He shook his head incomprehendingly. He could not tell. He only knew it would call again someday, and when it did he would have to obey.