Chapter Twenty Four.
Gardening under Difficulties.
If the brothers thought that they were going to hold undisputed sway over the island and be monarchs of all they surveyed, they were speedily undeceived next morning!
When they landed from the ship on the day before, in company with the captain and boat’s crew, all had noticed the numbers of penguins and rock petrels proceeding to and from the sea—the point from whence they started and the goal they invariably arrived at being a tangled mass of brushwood and tussock-grass on the right of the bay, about a mile or so distant from the waterfall on the extreme left of the hut.
The birds had kept up an endless chatter, croaking, or rather barking, just like a number of dogs quarrelling, in all manner of keys, as they bustled in and out of the “rookery” they had established in the arm of the cliff; and Fritz and Eric had been much diverted by their movements, particularly when the feathered colonists came out of the water from their fishing excursions and proceeded towards their nests.
The penguins, especially, seemed to possess the diving capabilities of the piscine tribe, for they were able to remain so long under the surface that they approached the beach without giving any warning that they were in the neighbourhood. Looking out to sea, as the little party of observers watched them, not a penguin was to be seen. Really, it would have been supposed that all of them were on shore, particularly as those there made such a din that it sounded as if myriads were gathered together in their hidden retreat; but, all at once, the surface of the water, some hundred yards or so from the beach, would be seen disturbed, as if from a catspaw of a breeze, although what wind there was blew from the opposite quarter, and then, a ripple appeared moving in towards the land, a dark-red beak and sometimes a pair of owlish eyes showing for a second and then disappearing again. The ripple came onwards quickly, and the lookers-on could notice that it was wedge-shaped, in the same fashion as wild geese wing their way through the air. A moment later, a band of perhaps from three to four hundred penguins would scramble out on to the stones with great rapidity, at once exchanging the vigorous and graceful movements for which they were so remarkable while in the water for the most ludicrous and ungainly ones possible now that they were on terra firma; for, they tumbled about on the shingle and apparently with difficulty assumed the normal position which is their habit when on land—that of standing upright on their feet. These latter are set too far back for their bodies to hang horizontally; so, with their fin-like wings hanging down helplessly by their sides, they look ashore, as Fritz said to Eric, “just the very image of a parcel of rough recruits” going through their first drill in the “awkward squad!”
When the penguins got fairly out of the water, beyond reach of the surf—which broke with a monotonous motion on the beach in a sullen sort of way, as if it was curbed by a higher law for the present, but would revenge itself bye-and-bye when it had free play—they would stand together in a cluster, drying and dressing themselves, talking together the while in their gruff barking voice, as if congratulating each other on their safe landing; and then, again, all at once, as if by preconcerted order, they would start scrambling off in a body over the stony causeway that lay between the beach and their rookery in the scrub, many falling down by the way and picking themselves up again by their flappers, their bodies being apparently too weighty for their legs. The whole lot thus waddled and rolled along, like a number of old gentlemen with gouty feet, until they reached one particular road into the tussock-grass thicket, which their repeated passage had worn smooth; and, along this they passed in single file in the funniest fashion imaginable. The performance altogether more resembled a scene in a pantomime than anything else!
This was not all, either.
The onlookers had only seen half the play; for, no sooner had this party of excursionists returned home than another band of equal numbers appeared coming out of the rookery from a second path, almost parallel with the first but distinctly separated by a hedge of brushwood—so as to prevent the birds going to and from the sea from interfering with each other’s movements.
These new—comers, when they got out of the grass on to the beach—which they reached in a similar sprawling way to that in which the others had before traversed the intervening space, “jest as if they were all drunk, every mother’s son of ’em!” as the skipper had said—stopped, similarly, to have a chat, telling each other probably their various plans for fishing; and then, after three or four minutes of noisy conversation, in which they barked and growled as if quarrelling vehemently, they would scuttle down with one consent in a group over the stones into the water.
From this spot, once they had dived in, a long line of ripples, radiating outwards towards the open sea, like that caused by a pebble flung into a pond, was the only indication, as far as could be seen, that the penguins were below the surface, not a head or beak showing.
Such was the ordinary procedure of the penguins, according to what Fritz and the others noticed on the first day of the brothers’ landing on the island.
A cursory glance was also given to the movements of the curious little rock hoppers and petrels. These made burrows in the ground under the basaltic débris at the foot of the cliffs, just like rabbits, popping in and out of their subterranean retreats in the same way as people travelling in the American backwoods have noticed the “prairie dogs” do; but, both the brothers, as well as the men from the Pilot’s Bride, were too busy getting the hut finished while daylight lasted and carrying up the stores from the beach to the little building afterwards, to devote much time to anything else.
When, too, the captain and seamen returned on board and the ship sailed, leaving Fritz and Eric alone, they had quite enough to occupy all their time with unpacking their things and preparing for the night, without thinking of the penguins; although they could hear their confused barking noise in the distance, long after nightfall, above the singing of the wind overhead through the waterfall gully and the dull roar of the surf breaking against the western side of the coast. The brothers, however, were too tired to keep awake long, soon sinking into a heavy sleep that was undisturbed till the early morning.
But, when day broke, the penguins would not allow their existence to be any longer forgotten, the brothers being soon made aware of their neighbourhood.
Eric, the sailor lad, accustomed to early calls at sea when on watch duty, was the first to awake.
“Himmel!” he exclaimed, stretching his arms out and giving a mighty kick out with his legs so as to thoroughly rouse himself. He fancied that he heard the mate’s voice calling down the hatchway, while summoning the crew on deck with the customary cry for all hands. “What’s all the row about—is the vessel taken aback, a mutiny broken loose, or what?”
“Eh?” said Fritz sleepily, opening his eyes with difficulty and staring round in a puzzled way, unable at first to make out where he was, the place seemed so strange.
“Why, whatever is the matter?” repeated Eric, springing up from amongst the rugs and blankets, which had made them a very comfortable bed. “I thought I was on board the Pilot’s Bride still, instead of here! Listen to that noise going on outside, Fritz? It sounds as if there were a lot of people fighting—I wonder if there are any other people here beside ourselves?”
“Nonsense!” said his brother, turning out too, now thoroughly awake. “There’s no chance of a ship coming in during the night; still, there certainly is a most awful row going on!—What can it be?”
“We’ll soon see!” ejaculated Eric, unfastening a rude door, which they had made with some broken spars, so as to shut up the entrance to the hut, and rolling away the barrels that had been piled against it, to withstand any shock of the wind from without. The brothers did not fear any other intruder save some blustering south-easter bursting in upon them unexpectedly.
“Well!” sang out Fritz, as soon as the lad had peered without—“do you see anybody?”
“No,” replied Eric, “not a soul! I don’t notice, either anything moving about but some penguins down on the beach. They are waddling about there in droves.”
“Ah, those are the noisy gentlemen you hear,” responded the other, coming to the doorway and looking around. “Don’t you catch the sound more fully now?”
“I would rather think I did,” said Eric. “I would be deaf otherwise!”
There was no doubt of the noise the birds made being audible enough!
The barking, grunting, yelping cries came in a regular chorus from the brushwood thicket in the distance, sometimes fainter and then again with increased force, as if fresh voices joined in the discordant refrain.
The noise of the birds was exactly like that laughing sort of grating cry which a flock of geese make on being frightened, by some passer-by on a common, say, when they run screaming away with outstretched wings, standing on the tips of their webbed feet as if dancing—the appearance of the penguins rushing in and out of the tussock clump where their rookery was, bearing out the parallel.
“They are nice shipmates, that’s all I can say!” remarked Eric presently, after gazing at the movements of the birds for some little time and listening to the deafening din they made. “They seem to be all at loggerheads.”
“I dare say if we understood their language,” said Fritz, “we would know that each of their different cries has a peculiar signification of its own. Perhaps, they are talking together sociably about all sorts of things.”
“Just like a pack of gabbling old women, you mean!” exclaimed Eric. “I should like to wring all their necks for waking us up so early!”
“Not a bit too soon,” observed Fritz. “See, the sun is just rising over the sea there; and, as we turned in early last night, there is all the better reason for our being up betimes this morning, considering all there is for us to do before we can settle down regularly to the business that brought us here. What a lovely sunrise!”
“Yes, pretty fairish to look at from the land,” replied the other, giving but a half-assent to his brother’s exclamation of admiration. “I’ve seen finer when I was with Captain Brown last voyage down below the Cape near Kerguelen. There, the sun used to light up all the icebergs. Himmel, Fritz, it was like fairyland!”
“That might have been so,” responded the elder of the two, in his grave German way when his thoughts ran deep; “but, this is beautiful enough for me.”
And so it might have been, as he said—beautiful enough for any one!
The moon had risen late on the previous night, and when Fritz and Eric turned out it was still shining brightly, with the stars peeping out here and there from the blue vault above; while, the wind having died away, all the shimmering expanse of sea that stretched away to the eastwards out of the bay shone like silver, appearing to be lazily wrapped in slumber, and only giving vent to an occasional long hum like a deeply drawn breath. But, all in a moment, the scene was changed—as if by the wave of an enchanter’s wand.
First, a rosy tinge appeared, creeping up from below the horizon imperceptibly and spreading gradually over the whole arc of sky, melting presently into a bright, glowing madder hue that changed to purple, which faded again into a greenish neutral tint that blended with the faint ultramarine blue of the zenith above. The bright moonlight now waning, was replaced for an instant or two only—the transition was so short—by a hazy, misty chiaro-oscuro, which, in another second, was dissolved by the ready effulgence of the solar rays, that darted here, there, and everywhere through it, piercing the curtain of mist to the core as it annihilated it.
Then, the sun rose.
But no, it did not rise in the ordinary sense of the expression; it literally jumped up at once from the sea, appearing several degrees above the horizon the same instant almost that Fritz and Eric caught sight of it and before they could realise its presence, albeit their eyes were intently fixed all the while on the point where it heralded its coming by the glowing vapours sent before.
“Ah!” exclaimed Fritz, drawing a deep breath when this transformation of nature was complete, the light touching up the projecting peaks of the cliff and making a glittering pathway right into the bay. “This sight is enough to inspire any one. It ought to make us set to our work with a good heart!”
“Right you are,” responded Eric, who was equally impressed with the magic scene—in spite of his disclaimer about having seen a better sunrise in antarctic seas. “As soon as we’ve had breakfast, for I confess I feel peckish again—it’s on account of going to bed so early, I suppose!—I’m ready to bear a hand as your assistant and help you with the garden. But, who shall be cook? One of the two of us had better take that office permanently, I think; eh, Fritz?”
“You can be, if you like,” said the other. “I fancy you have got a slight leaning that way, from what I recollect of you at home.”
“When I used to bother poor old Lorischen’s life out of her, by running into the kitchen, eh?”
“Yes, I remember it well.”
“Ah, that was when I was young,” said Eric, laughing. “I wouldn’t do it now, when I am grown up and know better!”
“Grown up, indeed! you’re a fine fellow to talk of being of age with your seventeen years, laddie!”
“Never mind that,” retorted Eric; “I mayn’t be as old as you are; but, at all events, I flatter myself I know better how to cook than a sub-lieutenant of the Hanoverian Tirailleurs!”
So saying, the lad proceeded to make a fire and put the kettle on in such a dexterous manner that it showed he was to the manner born, so to speak; Fritz helping to aid the progress of the breakfast by fetching water from a pool which the cascade had hollowed out for itself at the point where it finally leapt to level ground and betook itself to the sea in rivulet fashion.
The brothers only trenched on their stores to the extent of getting out some coffee and sugar, the remains of their supper being ample to provide them with their morning meal; and, after partaking of this, armed with their wheelbarrow and other agricultural implements, besides a bag of potatoes and some seed for planting, they sallied forth from the hut in the direction of the penguin colony.
Here, the Tristaner told them, they would find the best spot for a garden, the soil being not only richer and easier to cultivate but it was the only place that was free from rock, and not overrun by the luxuriant tussock-grass which spread over the rest of the land that was not thicket.
Proceeding to the right-hand side of the cliff under which their hut was built, they descended the somewhat sloping and broken ground that led in the direction of the penguin colony, the noise from which grew louder and louder as they advanced, until it culminated in a regular ear-deafening chorus.
When they had reached the distance of about a quarter of a mile, they came to a closely grown thicket, principally composed of a species of buckthorn tree that grew to the height of some thirty feet although of very slender trunk, underneath which was a mass of tangled grass and the same sort of debris from the cliff as that whereon their hut stood. The place was overgrown with moss and beautiful ferns, while several thrushes were to be seen amongst the branches of the trees just like those at home, although the brothers did not think they sang as sweetly: they whistled more in the way of the blackbird. The ground here, too, was quite honeycombed with the burrows of the little petrels, and into these their footsteps broke every moment. It was odd to hear the muffled chirp and feel the struggling birds beneath their feet as they stepped over the grass-grown soil. The ground had not the slightest appearance of being undermined by the mole-like petrels, its hollowness being only proved when it gave way to the tread; although, after the first surprise of the two young fellows at thus disturbing the tenants of the burrows, they walked as “gingerly” as they could, so as to avoid hurting the little creatures. The birds, however, seemed too busy with their domestic concerns to take any notice of them.
After passing through the strip of wood, which was not of very extensive dimensions, Fritz and Eric found the ground on the other side level and pretty free from vegetation. This open land was just at the angle between the cliffs, occupying a space of perhaps a couple of acres, exactly as the Tristaner had told them; so, here they began at once their operations for laying out their projected garden, which was to be the first task they had to accomplish before settling down, now that they had been saved the trouble of building a house to live in.
Eric, impetuous as usual, wanted to dig up and plant the entire lot; but Fritz was more practical, thinking it the wisest plan not to attempt too much at once.
“No,” said he, “we had better begin with a small portion at first; and then, when we have planted that, we can easily take in more land. It won’t be such easy work as you think, laddie!”
Accordingly, they marked out a space of about twenty yards square; and then, the brothers, taking off their coats, commenced digging at this with considerable energy for some length of time. But, Eric soon discovered that, easy as the thing looked, it was a much tougher job than he had expected, the ground being very hard from the fact of its never having had a spade put into it before; besides which, the exercise was one to which the lad was unaccustomed.
“Really, I must rest,” he exclaimed after a bit, his hands being then blistered, while he was bathed in perspiration from head to foot. He did not wish to give in so long as he saw Fritz plodding on laboriously, especially as he had made light of the matter when they began; but now he really had to confess to being beaten. “I declare,” he panted out, half-breathlessly—“my back feels broken, and I couldn’t dig another spadeful to save my life!”
“You went at it too hard at first,” said his brother. “Slow and sure is the best in the long run, you know! Why, I haven’t tired myself half as much as you; and, see, I have turned over twice the distance of hard ground that you have.”
“Ah, you are used to it,” replied Eric. “I’m more accustomed to ploughing the sea than turning up land! But, I say, Fritz; while you go on digging—that is if you’re not tired—I’ve just thought of something else I can do, so as not to be idle.”
“What is that—look on at me working, eh?”
“No,” said the lad, laughing at the other’s somewhat ironical question; “I mean doing something really—something that will be helping you and be of service to the garden.”
“Well, tell me,” replied Fritz, industriously going on using his spade with the most praiseworthy assiduity, not pausing for a moment even while he was speaking; for, he was anxious to have the ground finished as soon as he could.
“I thought that some of the guano from the place where the penguins make their nests would be fine stuff to manure our garden with before we put in the seeds, eh?”
“The very thing,” said Fritz. “It’s a capital idea of yours; and I am glad you thought of it, as it never occurred to me. I recollect now, that the Tristaner said they used it for the little gardens we saw at their settlement. It will make our potatoes and cabbages grow finely.”
“All right then; shall I get some?”
“By all means,” responded Fritz; “and, while you are collecting it, I will go on preparing the ground ready for it; I’ve nearly done half now, so, by the time you get back with the guano I shall have dug up the whole plot.”
“Here goes then!” cried Eric; and, away he went, trundling the wheelbarrow along, with a shovel inside it for scraping up the bird refuse and loading the little vehicle—disappearing soon from his brother’s gaze behind the tussock-grass thicket that skirted the extreme end of the garden patch, close to the cliff on the right-hand side of the bay, and exactly opposite to the site of their cottage, this being the place where, as already mentioned, the penguins had established their breeding-place, or “rookery.”
Prior to Eric’s departure, the birds had been noisy enough, keeping up such a continual croaking and barking that the brothers could hardly hear each other’s voice; but now, no sooner had the lad invaded what they seemed to look upon as their own particular domain, than the din proceeding from thence became terrific, causing Fritz to drop his spade for the first time since handling it and look up from his work, wondering what was happening in the distance.
He could, however, see nothing of Eric, the tussock-grass growing so high as to conceal his movements; so, he was just about resuming digging, fancying that his brother would shortly be back with his wheelbarrow full of guano manure and that then the uproar would be over, when, suddenly, he distinguished, above all the growling and barking of the penguins, the sound of the lad’s voice calling to him for aid.
“Help, Fritz, help!” cried Eric, almost in a shriek, as if in great pain. “Help, Fritz, help!”