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!”
Chapter Twenty Five.
Eric’s Cookery.
To throw down his spade a second time and rush off in the direction from whence his brother’s cries for assistance proceeded was but the work of an instant for Fritz; and when he had succeeded in pushing his way through the tangled tussock-grass, which grew matted as thick as a cane-brake, he found the lad in a terrible plight.
At first, the strong ammoniacal smell of the guano was so overpowering, combined with the fearful noise the penguins made—all screaming and chattering together, as if the denizens of the monkey house at the Zoological Gardens, which Fritz had once visited when in London, had been suddenly let loose amongst the parrots in the same establishment—that his senses were too confused to distinguish anything, especially as the thicket was enveloped in semi-darkness from the overhanging stems of the long grass which shut out the sunlight; but, after a brief interval, Fritz was able to comprehend the situation and see his brother. Poor Eric was lying face downwards, half-suffocated amidst the mass of bird refuse, with the wheelbarrow, which had got turned over in some mysterious way or other, lying over him and preventing him from rising. Really, but for Fritz’s speedy arrival, the lad might have lost his life in so strange a fashion, for he was quite speechless and his breath gone when his brother lifted him up.
Nor was this the worst either.