"What can that be?" he said, scratching his head.
"What—do you not remember, Fritz—or you, Jack?" M. Zermatt persisted.
"Is it that we have not given you an embrace in honour of the spring?" Jack replied.
"No, no!" Ernest answered, who had just come out from the paddock, rubbing his eyes and stretching his limbs.
"Then it is because we are going off without having had breakfast, isn't it, Ernest, you young glutton?" said Jack.
"No," Ernest replied, "it has nothing to do with that. Papa only wants to remind you of our custom of firing the two guns of Shark's Island battery every year at this time."
"Precisely," M. Zermatt answered.
As a matter of fact, it had been the custom of Fritz and Jack, on one of the days in the second fortnight of October, at the end of the rainy season, to go to the island at the entrance to Deliverance Bay and rehoist the New Switzerland flag, then to salute it with two guns whose report could be heard quite distinctly at Rock Castle. After this, without much hope, they took a survey of the whole sea and shore. Perhaps some ship passing through those waters would catch the sound of the two reports. Perhaps it would soon arrive within sight of the bay. Perhaps some shipwrecked people had even been cast upon some point of this land, which they must suppose to be uninhabited, and these discharges of ordnance would give them warning.
"It is quite true," said Fritz, "we were about to forget our duty. Go and get the canoe ready, Jack, and we shall be back in less than an hour."
But Ernest objected.