Now, however, restricted to their scanty domain, bounded by the bare cliff at the back and encompassed by lofty headlands on either side, they were prevented from wandering beyond the limits of the bay, save by taking to their boat; and this, the strong winds which set in at the latter end of March rendered utterly impossible of achievement.
Consequently, they began to realise more fully their solitary condition, recognising the fact that they were crusoes indeed!
No event of any importance happened after the episode of the bonfire and the storm in which the crew of the brig perished, for some weeks, nothing occurring to break the monotony of the solitary life they were leading; until, one morning, without any warning, the penguins, which had been their constant companions from the commencement of their self-chosen exile up to now, suddenly left the island.
This was in the month of April.
Never was a migration more unexpected.
On the evening before, the birds, so long as daylight lasted, were seen still playing about in the bay and arranging themselves in lines along the rough escarpment of the headlands, where they were drawn up like soldiers on parade and apparently dressed in the old-fashioned uniform that is sometimes still seen on the stage. Really, their black and white plumage exactly resembled the white buckskin breeches and black three-cornered hats of the whilom mousquetaires; while their drooping flappers seemed like hands down their sides in the attitude of “attention!”—the upper portions of the wings, projecting in front, representing those horrible cross-belts that used to make the men look as if they wore stays.
The penguins seemed so much at home on the island that it looked as if they never intended leaving it, albeit the brothers noticed that the birds barked and grumbled more discordantly than they had done of late. No doubt there was something on hand, they thought; but they never dreamt that this grand pow-wow was their leave-taking of the rookery; but, lo and behold! when Eric came out of the hut next morning to pay his customary matutinal visit to the beach, there was not a single penguin to be seen anywhere in the vicinity, either out in the water or on land!
They had disappeared, as if by magic, in one single night. In the evening before, they were with them; when day dawned, they were gone!
Fritz and Eric had got so accustomed to the birds by this time, studying their habits and watching the progress of many of the adult penguins from the egg to representative birdom, as they passed through the various gradations of hatching and moulting, that they quite missed them for the first few days after their departure.
The cliffs, without their presence to enliven them, appeared never so stern and bleak and bare as now; the headlands never so forbidding and impassable; the valley never so prison-like, to the brothers, shut in as they were and confined to the bay!