Forbush is a young scientist who has volunteered to spend a full Antarctic summer alone at Cape Royds, studying the penguin colonies there. He lives in the huts erected by the Shackleton Expedition of 1906-08, and his solitary thoughts are powerfully influenced by the aura of those original builders and occupants of the place. In the desolate beauty of this empty land Forbush goes about his scientific routine, and as he records the arrival, mating and nesting of the penguins, and their terrible survival, struggles against storms and natural foes, he becomes obsessed with the enigmas of life and death, cruelty and love. The solution, the affirmation that he finds, is grimly convincing.