Indeed, it seemed that some serious trouble had again overtaken the luckless naturalist.
"Oh, boys! boys!" came his cries from the direction of the penguin rookery. "Help! The menguins are plurdering us—I mean the penguins are murdering us!"
"Fo' de Lawd's sake, come quick!" came a yell in Rastus's tones.
"We're done bin eated alive by dese yar pencilguins."
The rookery lay in a slight depression and was not visible from where the boys stood, so that they were unable to imagine what was taking place.
"They are in serious trouble of some sort again," cried Frank. "Come on, boys, let's go to their rescue."
The motor-sledge was soon speeding over the snow and in a few minutes was at the edge of the declivity in which lay the penguin rookery. Gazing down into it the boys could hardly keep from laughing.
Indeed, Billy did burst into loud roars of merriment as he beheld the strange figures cut by the professor and Rastus, as they strove to escape the onslaught of the whole colony of penguins, which, with sharp shrieks of rage were attacking them with their beaks and beating them with their wings.
[Illustration: "They Strove to Escape the Onslaught of the Penguins.">[
"Oh, please, good Mistah Pencilguins, I didn't mean no harm," roared Rastus, who seemed to think the human-looking birds could understand him. "Go afta' de perfusser, it was him dat tole me youalls tasted lak chicking."
"Stop that, you greedy black rascal," retorted the professor, laying about him with the egg-basket. "If you hadn't tried to grab that penguin we wouldn't have been in this trouble."