Fritz and Eric Part 29

"The sooner we plant the seed, the sooner it will grow up," said Fritz gravely. "Remember, old fellow, it is late in the spring now here; and, unless the things are put into the ground without further delay, Captain Brown said we need not hope to have any return from them this year."

"All right, Fritz," replied Eric cheerfully, the name of the skipper having the talismanic effect of making him curb his own wishes anent the immediate exploration of the island, which he had planned out for the next day's programme. "We'll do the garden first, brother, if you like."

"I think that will be wisest," said Fritz. "But now let us arrange our bunks and have a bit of something to eat from the little basket the steward put up for us before coming ash.o.r.e. After that, we must go to roost like the penguins outside, for it is nearly dark."

"Aye, aye, sir," responded Eric, touching his cap with mock deference.

"You just do that again!" said Fritz, threatening him in a joking way.

"Or, what?" asked the other, jumping out of his reach in make-believe terror.

"I'll eat your share of this nice supper as well as mine."

"Oh, a truce then," cried Eric, laughing and coming back to his brother's side; when the two, sitting down in the hut, whose interior now looked very comfortable with the lamp lit, they proceeded to demolish the roast fowl and piece of salt pork which Captain Brown had directed the steward to put into a basket for them, so that they should be saved the trouble of cooking for themselves the first day of their sojourn on the island, as well as enjoy a savoury little repast in their early experience of solitude.

"I say," remarked Eric, with his mouth full. "This is jolly, ain't it!"

"Yes, pretty well for a first start at our new life," replied Fritz, eating away with equal gusto. "I only hope that we'll get on as favourably later on."

"I hope so, too, brother," responded the other. "There's no harm in wishing that, is there?"

"No," said Fritz. "But, remember, the garden to-morrow."

"I shan't forget again, old fellow, with you to jog my memory!"

"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 ma.s.s of brushwood and tussock-gra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sumed 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 cl.u.s.ter, 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-gra.s.s thicket, which their repeated pa.s.sage had worn smooth; and, along this they pa.s.sed in single file in the funniest fashion imaginable. The performance altogether more resembled a scene in a pantomime than anything else!

This was not all, either.

The onlookers had only seen half the play; for, no sooner had this party of excursionists returned home than another band of equal numbers appeared coming out of the rookery from a second path, almost parallel with the first but distinctly separated by a hedge of brushwood--so as to prevent the birds going to and from the sea from interfering with each other's movements.

These new--comers, when they got out of the gra.s.s on to the beach--which they reached in a similar sprawling way to that in which the others had before traversed the intervening s.p.a.ce, "jest as if they were all drunk, every mother's son of 'em!" as the skipper had said--stopped, similarly, to have a chat, telling each other probably their various plans for fishing; and then, after three or four minutes of noisy conversation, in which they barked and growled as if quarrelling vehemently, they would scuttle down with one consent in a group over the stones into the water.

From this spot, once they had dived in, a long line of ripples, radiating outwards towards the open sea, like that caused by a pebble flung into a pond, was the only indication, as far as could be seen, that the penguins were below the surface, not a head or beak showing.

Such was the ordinary procedure of the penguins, according to what Fritz and the others noticed on the first day of the brothers' landing on the island.

A cursory glance was also given to the movements of the curious little rock hoppers and petrels. These made burrows in the ground under the basaltic debris at the foot of the cliffs, just like rabbits, popping in and out of their subterranean retreats in the same way as people travelling in the American backwoods have noticed the "prairie dogs" do; but, both the brothers, as well as the men from the _Pilot's Bride_, were too busy getting the hut finished while daylight lasted and carrying up the stores from the beach to the little building afterwards, to devote much time to anything else.

When, too, the captain and seamen returned on board and the ship sailed, leaving Fritz and Eric alone, they had quite enough to occupy all their time with unpacking their things and preparing for the night, without thinking of the penguins; although they could hear their confused barking noise in the distance, long after nightfall, above the singing of the wind overhead through the waterfall gully and the dull roar of the surf breaking against the western side of the coast. The brothers, however, were too tired to keep awake long, soon sinking into a heavy sleep that was undisturbed till the early morning.

But, when day broke, the penguins would not allow their existence to be any longer forgotten, the brothers being soon made aware of their neighbourhood.

Eric, the sailor lad, accustomed to early calls at sea when on watch duty, was the first to awake.

"Himmel!" he exclaimed, stretching his arms out and giving a mighty kick out with his legs so as to thoroughly rouse himself. He fancied that he heard the mate's voice calling down the hatchway, while summoning the crew on deck with the customary cry for all hands. "What's all the row about--is the vessel taken aback, a mutiny broken loose, or what?"

"Eh?" said Fritz sleepily, opening his eyes with difficulty and staring round in a puzzled way, unable at first to make out where he was, the place seemed so strange.

"Why, whatever is the matter?" repeated Eric, springing up from amongst the rugs and blankets, which had made them a very comfortable bed. "I thought I was on board the _Pilot's Bride_ still, instead of here!

Listen to that noise going on outside, Fritz? It sounds as if there were a lot of people fighting--I wonder if there are any other people here beside ourselves?"

"Nonsense!" said his brother, turning out too, now thoroughly awake.

"There's no chance of a ship coming in during the night; still, there certainly is a most awful row going on!--What can it be?"

"We'll soon see!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Eric, unfastening a rude door, which they had made with some broken spars, so as to shut up the entrance to the hut, and rolling away the barrels that had been piled against it, to withstand any shock of the wind from without. The brothers did not fear any other intruder save some bl.u.s.tering south-easter bursting in upon them unexpectedly.

"Well!" sang out Fritz, as soon as the lad had peered without--"do you see anybody?"

"No," replied Eric, "not a soul! I don't notice, either anything moving about but some penguins down on the beach. They are waddling about there in droves."

"Ah, those are the noisy gentlemen you hear," responded the other, coming to the doorway and looking around. "Don't you catch the sound more fully now?"

"I would rather think I did," said Eric. "I would be deaf otherwise!"

There was no doubt of the noise the birds made being audible enough!

The barking, grunting, yelping cries came in a regular chorus from the brushwood thicket in the distance, sometimes fainter and then again with increased force, as if fresh voices joined in the discordant refrain.

The noise of the birds was exactly like that laughing sort of grating cry which a flock of geese make on being frightened, by some pa.s.ser-by on a common, say, when they run screaming away with outstretched wings, standing on the tips of their webbed feet as if dancing--the appearance of the penguins rushing in and out of the tussock clump where their rookery was, bearing out the parallel.

"They are nice shipmates, that's all I can say!" remarked Eric presently, after gazing at the movements of the birds for some little time and listening to the deafening din they made. "They seem to be all at loggerheads."

"I dare say if we understood their language," said Fritz, "we would know that each of their different cries has a peculiar signification of its own. Perhaps, they are talking together sociably about all sorts of things."

"Just like a pack of gabbling old women, you mean!" exclaimed Eric. "I should like to wring all their necks for waking us up so early!"

"Not a bit too soon," observed Fritz. "See, the sun is just rising over the sea there; and, as we turned in early last night, there is all the better reason for our being up betimes this morning, considering all there is for us to do before we can settle down regularly to the business that brought us here. What a lovely sunrise!"

"Yes, pretty fairish to look at from the land," replied the other, giving but a half-a.s.sent to his brother's exclamation of admiration.

"I've seen finer when I was with Captain Brown last voyage down below the Cape near Kerguelen. There, the sun used to light up all the icebergs. Himmel, Fritz, it was like fairyland!"

"That might have been so," responded the elder of the two, in his grave German way when his thoughts ran deep; "but, this is beautiful enough for me."