“Ah, I’ll not omit my part of it, then,” retorted Fritz, joining in Eric’s laughter. Then, the brothers, having finished their meal, turned out their lamp; and, throwing themselves down on a heap of rugs and blankets which they had piled together in a corner of the hut, they were soon asleep, completely tired out with all the fatigues and exertions of the eventful day.
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!