What a scene! It beats imagination. Tier after tier on the rocky cliffs sat those birds watching their nests and eggs.
They found a little cove in the tiny islet, and at the head of this the boat was beached on the dark sand. The ground was everywhere so crowded with nests that it was with difficulty they could walk amongst them without doing damage.
How beautiful they were too! Of every shade of blue and green, with the strangest of jet-black markings, were most of them.
But the king penguins did not cohabit with any of the gull families. They thought themselves far too aristocratic for this, and here, as on other lonely isles of the great southern ocean, they dwelt in a colony all by themselves, which must have numbered about one thousand all told. This colony had footpaths leading down to the shallowest parts of the shore, whence these droll birds could easily take to the water.
They are really droll, whether walking, standing, running, or swimming. They stand quite erect on their sturdy legs, so that a line dropped from their beaks would almost fall between their broad webbed feet. Wings they have none, a pair of broad flappers doing duty for these, which seems to aid considerably their progress in running. But these flappers are really paddles or oars in the water, and I know of few birds that can swim so fast or turn so quickly in the sea.
On the arrival of the boat's crew there was a general panic among this community. As regards the male birds, tall as they were, they did not show a very great amount of courage.
Sauve qui peut was their motto, and let the females take care of themselves. Like the pigs in New Testament times, when the cast-out devils got leave to go into them, they ran headlong down a steep place into the sea. Their motions as they waddled and scurried along, oftentimes tumbling over a stone or a tussock heap, were grotesque in the extreme, and everyone roared with laughter.
With the exception of little Johnnie Shingles. I'm sure I cannot tell you how he came to be called Johnnie Shingles, for pet names grow on board ship just as they do on shore. Johnnie was picked up somewhere abroad, and was looked upon as part and parcel of the good barque Flora M'Vayne. He was a nigger of purest, blackest breed, probably four feet four inches high, and in age something between nine and nineteen. Nobody knew and nobody cared. Johnnie Shingles was just Johnnie Shingles, no more and no less. Well, he couldn't have been much less. He was very funny, however, and consequently a favourite with everybody on board, from Mate Morgan to the monkey. His duty on board was really to be at the beck and call of all hands, and to clean and feed the pets, including Viking, the red-tailed gray parrot, and Jim the ape.
Well, you see, Johnnie was never allowed to land from the boat like any of the crew, but as soon as he came within reasonable distance of the shore he was simply thrown overboard, and left to struggle in through the surf as best he could.
But Johnnie didn't mind the surf much, and he didn't mind the sharks. Nor do I think the sharks minded Johnnie. In fact, my knowledge of sharks generally causes me to come to the conclusion, that they are somewhat particular in their tastes, and much prefer a white man to a black.