Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Three.Taking an Inventory.The westerly wind being, of course, fair for thePilot’s Bridein her run back to Tristan d’Acunha, she soon disappeared in the distance—the snow-capped cone of the larger island being presently the only object to be seen on the horizon, looking in the distance like a faint white cloud against the sky. The evening haze shut out everything else from their gaze: the lower outlines of the land they had so recently left: the vessel that had conveyed them to their solitary home.Nothing was to be seen but the rolling tumid sea that stretched around them everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, heaving and swelling and with the breeze flecking off the tops of the billows into foam as its resistless impetus impelled them onwards, away, away!“Well,” exclaimed Eric, after a long pause, during which neither of the brothers had spoken, both being anxiously watching thePilot’s Bride—until, first, her hull and then her gleaming sails, lit up for awhile by the rays of the setting sun, had sunk out of sight—“well, here we are at last!”“Yes, here we are,” said Fritz, “and we’ve now got to make the best of our little kingdom with only our own companionship.”“We won’t quarrel, at all events, brother,” replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing. The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything then—just because he couldn’t cry!“I don’t suppose we will,” said the other—“that is, not intentionally. But, brother, we will have to guard our tempers with a strong hand; for, when two persons are thrown together in such close association as we shall be during the next ensuing months—with no one else to speak to and no authority to control us, save our own consciences and the knowledge of the all-seeing Eye above, weighing and considering our actions—it will require a good deal of mutual forbearance and kindly feeling on the part of one towards the other to prevent us from falling out sometimes, if only for a short while. Even brothers like us, Eric, who love each other dearly, may possibly fall out under such trying circumstances!”“Aye, but we mustn’t,” said Eric. “Instead of falling out, we’ll fall into each other’s arms whenever we agree to differ, as old nurse Lorischen would have said!” and he gave his brother an enthusiastic hug as he spoke, putting his words into action with a suddenness that almost threw Fritz off his feet.“Hullo!” exclaimed the latter good-humouredly, smiling as he disengaged himself from Eric’s bear-like embrace. “Gently lad. Your affectionate plan, I’m afraid, would sometimes interfere with the progress of our work; but talking of that, as the vessel has now disappeared, there’s no use in our standing here any longer looking at the sea. Suppose we begin to make ourselves at home and arrange our things in the snug little cottage which our good friends have built for us?”“Right you are!” responded Eric, starting off towards the cliff, under the lee of which the Tristaner had directed the hut to be built, so that it might be sheltered from the strong winds of the winter, which would soon have blown it down had it been erected in a more exposed situation.Fritz followed more leisurely to the level plateau by the waterfall, where stood their cottage.Here, arresting his footsteps, he remained a moment surveying the little domain before joining his brother, who had already rushed within the building.That boy was all impulse: always eager to be doing something!The territory of the young crusoes was of limited dimensions. Extending about a mile laterally, it was bounded on either side by lofty headlands that projected into the sea, enclosing the narrow strip of beach that lay between in their twin arms. The depth of the valley inwards was even more confined by a steep cliff, down whose abrupt face slipped and hopped through a gorge, or gully, a little rivulet. This stream, on its progress being arrested by a shelf in front of the rocky escarpment, tumbled over the obstacle in a sheet of cloud-like spray, being thus converted into a typical “waterfall” that resembled somewhat that of Staubbach, as the brothers had noticed when making their first observations from the ship. The rivulet, collecting its scattered fragments below, made its way to the beach in a meandering course, passing by in its passage the slight hollow in the plateau at the base of the furthermost crag, close by where the cottage was situated.The “location,” as Captain Brown would have termed the sloping ground between the cliff and the sea, was certainly not an extensive one; for, in the event of their wishing to expand their little settlement, in the fashion of squatters out West, by “borrowing” land from adjacent lots, the inexorable wall of volcanic rock to the rear of the plateau and on its right and left flank forbade the carrying out of any such scheme; still, the place was big enough for their house, besides affording room for a tidy-sized garden—that is, when the two had time to dig up the soil and plant the potatoes and other seed which the skipper had provided them with, so that they might have a supply of vegetables anon.At first sight, there did not appear to be any means of exit from this little valley; for, the steep cliffs that hedged in its sides and back lifted themselves skywards to the height of nearly a thousand feet, while their fronts were generally so smooth and perpendicular that it would have been impossible even for a monkey to have climbed them—much less human beings, albeit one was a sailor and pretty well accustomed to saltatory feats! But, on their inspecting the apparently insurmountable breastwork a little closer, Fritz noticed, as the young Tristaner had pointed out to them, that, by the side of the gorge through which the waterfall made its erratic descent to the lower level, the face of the cliff was more strongly indented; so that, by using the tussock-grass, which grew there in great abundance, as a sort of scaling ladder, and taking advantage of the niches in the rock to step upon where this failed, the summit could be thus easily gained. The top, however, was so far away from the beach and the foothold so insecure that the work of ascending the crag would be a most hazardous proceeding at the best of times, to the elder brother at all events.While Fritz was thus cogitating, and diligently studying the features of the scene around, Eric was waiting for him impatiently at the door of the rough-looking hut which the sailors had built for them under the superintendence of Captain Brown and the Tristaner.The young sailor was too restless to remain quiet very long.“Do come along, brother!” he called out after a while. “What a time you are, to be sure; we’ll never be able to unpack our things before it’s dark, unless you look sharp!”“All right, I’m coming,” replied the other; and he was soon by the side of Eric, who had already begun to overhaul the various articles that had been brought up from the boat by the sailors and piled up in a corner of the hut.“What a lot of things!” exclaimed the lad. “Why, there are ever so many more parcels than I thought there were!”“Yes,” said his brother; “it is all that good Captain Brown’s doing, I suppose. When we were parting, he told me that he had left me a few ‘notions,’ besides our own traps.”“He has too, brother. Just look here at this barrel of beef; you didn’t pay him for that, eh?”“No,” said Fritz; “I only bought some pork and ship’s biscuits, besides flour and a few groceries.”“Then he has thought of much that we forgot,” remarked Eric with considerable satisfaction. “I don’t think our groceries included preserved peaches and tinned oysters, Fritz; yet, here they are!”“You don’t say so—the kind old fellow!” exclaimed Fritz; and then he, too, set to work examining the stores as eagerly as his brother.Before leaving Providence, the two had purchased a couple of spades and shovels, an American axe, a pick, a rake, a wheelbarrow, and a hoe for agricultural purposes—the skipper having told them that the soil would be fertile enough in the summer at Inaccessible Island for them to plant most sorts of kitchen produce, which they would find of great help in eking out the salted provisions they took from the ship, besides being better for their health; while, to give emphasis to his advice, he presented them with a plentiful stock of potatoes to put into the ground, besides garden seed.For cooking, the brothers were provided with a large kettle and frying pan, a couple of saucepans, several knives and forks, some crockery, and, in addition, a large iron cauldron for melting down seal blubber; for hunting purposes, to complete the list of their gear, they had two harpoons, a supply of fishing hooks and a grapnel, two Remington rifles—besides Fritz’s needle-gun which he had used in the first part of the Franco-German war, before he became an officer and was entitled to carry a sword—a supply of cartridges, five pounds of loose powder, lead for making bullets, and a mould.Among their weapons, also, was an old muzzle-loading fowling piece for which shot had been taken, Fritz thinking that it might come in handy for shooting birds—although, as he subsequently found out, all of the feathered tribe they saw were penguins, and these did not require any expenditure of powder and shot on their behalf, being easily knocked down with a stick.Nor did they forget to bring with them three or four strong sheath knives, for skinning the seals and any other use for which they were applicable; and, to add to their stock of cutlery implements, the skipper had presented Fritz with a serviceable bowie knife, whose broad double-dagger-like blade was powerful enough to cut down a tree on an emergency or make mince-meat of an enemy!Fritz had likewise purchased in Rhode Island a good stock of winter clothing for himself and Eric, a couple of thick blanket rugs, and two empty bed-tick covers—to be afterwards filled with the down they should procure from the sea birds. He bought, too, a strong lamp, with a supply of paraffin oil, and several dozen boxes of matches; so that he and Eric should not have to adopt the tinder and flint business, or be obliged to rub two pieces of dry stick together, in the primitive fashion of the Australian aborigines, when they wanted a light.So much for their equipment.For their internal use, Fritz had selected from the ship’s stores a barrel of salt pork, two hundred-weight of rice, one hundred pounds of hard biscuit, two hundred-weight of flour, twenty pounds of tea and thirty of coffee, and a barrel of sugar; besides which, in the way of condiments and luxuries, their stores included three pounds of table salt, some pepper, a gallon of vinegar, a jar of pickles, a bottle of brandy and some Epsom salts in the view of possible medical contingencies. The skipper also advised their taking a barrel of coarse salt to cure their sealskins with, as well as empty casks to contain what oil they managed to boil down.These were their own stores; but, imagine the surprise of Fritz and his brother, when they found that Captain Brown had added to their stock the welcome present of a barrel of salt beef and a couple of hams, a good-sized cheese, and some boxes of sardines, besides the preserved fruits and pickled oysters which Eric had already discovered.Nor did the skipper’s kindness stop here. He had packed up with their things a couple of extra blankets, which they subsequently found of great comfort in the cold weather, in addition to their rugs; a wide piece of tarpaulin to cover their hut with; a few short spars and spare timber; and, lastly, a clock—not to speak of the valuable whale-boat which he had thought of just as he was going away and had presented to them all standing, with oars, mast and sails in complete trim.“I declare,” said Fritz, “he has been better than a father to us all through. I never heard of such good nature in my life!”“Nor I,” responded Eric, equally full of gratitude. “Celia, too, before I left Providence, gave me a nice little housewife, wherewith I shall mend all our things when they want repairing, besides which, she made ma a present of quite a little library of books.”“And I’ve brought all mine as well,” said Fritz, unrolling a large package as he spoke.“We’ll not be hard up for reading, at any rate,” remarked Eric, laughing joyously. “Food for the mind as well as food for the body, eh?”“Yes,” said Fritz; “plenty of both.”“But, how on earth shall we ever be able to get through all this lot of grub?”“Ah, we won’t find it a bit too much,” said Fritz.“What, for only us two, brother?” exclaimed Eric in astonishment.“You forget it has got to last us more than a year, for certain; while, should thePilot’s Bridenot visit us again next autumn, it will be all we may have to depend on for twice that length of time.”“Oh, I forgot that.”“If you could see the pile of rations which one regiment alone of men manages to consume in a week, the same as I have, Eric, you would not wonder so much at the amount of our supplies.”“But think, brother, a regiment is very different to two fellows like us!”“Just calculate, laddie,” answered the other, “the food so many men would require for only one day; and then for us two, say, for seven hundred days—where’s the difference?”“Ah, I see,” said Eric, reflecting for a moment. “Perhaps there won’t be too much, after all, eh?”“Wait till this time next year, and see what we shall have left then, laddie!”“But, remember the goats and pigs on the top of the mountain which the Tristaner spoke to us about. We’ll have those for food as well, won’t we?”“Wait till we catch them,” remarked Fritz dryly; adding shortly afterwards, “We’d better stop talking now, however, and see about getting our bed things ready for turning in for the night. Recollect, we’ll have a busy day of it to-morrow.”“Ah, I shall go up and explore the mountain top, brother, the first thing in the morning,” said Eric impulsively. “I’m dying to see what it’s like!”“We have more important things to do, before satisfying our curiosity,” observed the other. “Don’t you recollect the garden?”“I declare I forgot it, brother, for the moment, although there’s no need for us to hurry about that.”“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 ashore. 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.

The westerly wind being, of course, fair for thePilot’s Bridein her run back to Tristan d’Acunha, she soon disappeared in the distance—the snow-capped cone of the larger island being presently the only object to be seen on the horizon, looking in the distance like a faint white cloud against the sky. The evening haze shut out everything else from their gaze: the lower outlines of the land they had so recently left: the vessel that had conveyed them to their solitary home.

Nothing was to be seen but the rolling tumid sea that stretched around them everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, heaving and swelling and with the breeze flecking off the tops of the billows into foam as its resistless impetus impelled them onwards, away, away!

“Well,” exclaimed Eric, after a long pause, during which neither of the brothers had spoken, both being anxiously watching thePilot’s Bride—until, first, her hull and then her gleaming sails, lit up for awhile by the rays of the setting sun, had sunk out of sight—“well, here we are at last!”

“Yes, here we are,” said Fritz, “and we’ve now got to make the best of our little kingdom with only our own companionship.”

“We won’t quarrel, at all events, brother,” replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing. The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything then—just because he couldn’t cry!

“I don’t suppose we will,” said the other—“that is, not intentionally. But, brother, we will have to guard our tempers with a strong hand; for, when two persons are thrown together in such close association as we shall be during the next ensuing months—with no one else to speak to and no authority to control us, save our own consciences and the knowledge of the all-seeing Eye above, weighing and considering our actions—it will require a good deal of mutual forbearance and kindly feeling on the part of one towards the other to prevent us from falling out sometimes, if only for a short while. Even brothers like us, Eric, who love each other dearly, may possibly fall out under such trying circumstances!”

“Aye, but we mustn’t,” said Eric. “Instead of falling out, we’ll fall into each other’s arms whenever we agree to differ, as old nurse Lorischen would have said!” and he gave his brother an enthusiastic hug as he spoke, putting his words into action with a suddenness that almost threw Fritz off his feet.

“Hullo!” exclaimed the latter good-humouredly, smiling as he disengaged himself from Eric’s bear-like embrace. “Gently lad. Your affectionate plan, I’m afraid, would sometimes interfere with the progress of our work; but talking of that, as the vessel has now disappeared, there’s no use in our standing here any longer looking at the sea. Suppose we begin to make ourselves at home and arrange our things in the snug little cottage which our good friends have built for us?”

“Right you are!” responded Eric, starting off towards the cliff, under the lee of which the Tristaner had directed the hut to be built, so that it might be sheltered from the strong winds of the winter, which would soon have blown it down had it been erected in a more exposed situation.

Fritz followed more leisurely to the level plateau by the waterfall, where stood their cottage.

Here, arresting his footsteps, he remained a moment surveying the little domain before joining his brother, who had already rushed within the building.

That boy was all impulse: always eager to be doing something!

The territory of the young crusoes was of limited dimensions. Extending about a mile laterally, it was bounded on either side by lofty headlands that projected into the sea, enclosing the narrow strip of beach that lay between in their twin arms. The depth of the valley inwards was even more confined by a steep cliff, down whose abrupt face slipped and hopped through a gorge, or gully, a little rivulet. This stream, on its progress being arrested by a shelf in front of the rocky escarpment, tumbled over the obstacle in a sheet of cloud-like spray, being thus converted into a typical “waterfall” that resembled somewhat that of Staubbach, as the brothers had noticed when making their first observations from the ship. The rivulet, collecting its scattered fragments below, made its way to the beach in a meandering course, passing by in its passage the slight hollow in the plateau at the base of the furthermost crag, close by where the cottage was situated.

The “location,” as Captain Brown would have termed the sloping ground between the cliff and the sea, was certainly not an extensive one; for, in the event of their wishing to expand their little settlement, in the fashion of squatters out West, by “borrowing” land from adjacent lots, the inexorable wall of volcanic rock to the rear of the plateau and on its right and left flank forbade the carrying out of any such scheme; still, the place was big enough for their house, besides affording room for a tidy-sized garden—that is, when the two had time to dig up the soil and plant the potatoes and other seed which the skipper had provided them with, so that they might have a supply of vegetables anon.

At first sight, there did not appear to be any means of exit from this little valley; for, the steep cliffs that hedged in its sides and back lifted themselves skywards to the height of nearly a thousand feet, while their fronts were generally so smooth and perpendicular that it would have been impossible even for a monkey to have climbed them—much less human beings, albeit one was a sailor and pretty well accustomed to saltatory feats! But, on their inspecting the apparently insurmountable breastwork a little closer, Fritz noticed, as the young Tristaner had pointed out to them, that, by the side of the gorge through which the waterfall made its erratic descent to the lower level, the face of the cliff was more strongly indented; so that, by using the tussock-grass, which grew there in great abundance, as a sort of scaling ladder, and taking advantage of the niches in the rock to step upon where this failed, the summit could be thus easily gained. The top, however, was so far away from the beach and the foothold so insecure that the work of ascending the crag would be a most hazardous proceeding at the best of times, to the elder brother at all events.

While Fritz was thus cogitating, and diligently studying the features of the scene around, Eric was waiting for him impatiently at the door of the rough-looking hut which the sailors had built for them under the superintendence of Captain Brown and the Tristaner.

The young sailor was too restless to remain quiet very long.

“Do come along, brother!” he called out after a while. “What a time you are, to be sure; we’ll never be able to unpack our things before it’s dark, unless you look sharp!”

“All right, I’m coming,” replied the other; and he was soon by the side of Eric, who had already begun to overhaul the various articles that had been brought up from the boat by the sailors and piled up in a corner of the hut.

“What a lot of things!” exclaimed the lad. “Why, there are ever so many more parcels than I thought there were!”

“Yes,” said his brother; “it is all that good Captain Brown’s doing, I suppose. When we were parting, he told me that he had left me a few ‘notions,’ besides our own traps.”

“He has too, brother. Just look here at this barrel of beef; you didn’t pay him for that, eh?”

“No,” said Fritz; “I only bought some pork and ship’s biscuits, besides flour and a few groceries.”

“Then he has thought of much that we forgot,” remarked Eric with considerable satisfaction. “I don’t think our groceries included preserved peaches and tinned oysters, Fritz; yet, here they are!”

“You don’t say so—the kind old fellow!” exclaimed Fritz; and then he, too, set to work examining the stores as eagerly as his brother.

Before leaving Providence, the two had purchased a couple of spades and shovels, an American axe, a pick, a rake, a wheelbarrow, and a hoe for agricultural purposes—the skipper having told them that the soil would be fertile enough in the summer at Inaccessible Island for them to plant most sorts of kitchen produce, which they would find of great help in eking out the salted provisions they took from the ship, besides being better for their health; while, to give emphasis to his advice, he presented them with a plentiful stock of potatoes to put into the ground, besides garden seed.

For cooking, the brothers were provided with a large kettle and frying pan, a couple of saucepans, several knives and forks, some crockery, and, in addition, a large iron cauldron for melting down seal blubber; for hunting purposes, to complete the list of their gear, they had two harpoons, a supply of fishing hooks and a grapnel, two Remington rifles—besides Fritz’s needle-gun which he had used in the first part of the Franco-German war, before he became an officer and was entitled to carry a sword—a supply of cartridges, five pounds of loose powder, lead for making bullets, and a mould.

Among their weapons, also, was an old muzzle-loading fowling piece for which shot had been taken, Fritz thinking that it might come in handy for shooting birds—although, as he subsequently found out, all of the feathered tribe they saw were penguins, and these did not require any expenditure of powder and shot on their behalf, being easily knocked down with a stick.

Nor did they forget to bring with them three or four strong sheath knives, for skinning the seals and any other use for which they were applicable; and, to add to their stock of cutlery implements, the skipper had presented Fritz with a serviceable bowie knife, whose broad double-dagger-like blade was powerful enough to cut down a tree on an emergency or make mince-meat of an enemy!

Fritz had likewise purchased in Rhode Island a good stock of winter clothing for himself and Eric, a couple of thick blanket rugs, and two empty bed-tick covers—to be afterwards filled with the down they should procure from the sea birds. He bought, too, a strong lamp, with a supply of paraffin oil, and several dozen boxes of matches; so that he and Eric should not have to adopt the tinder and flint business, or be obliged to rub two pieces of dry stick together, in the primitive fashion of the Australian aborigines, when they wanted a light.

So much for their equipment.

For their internal use, Fritz had selected from the ship’s stores a barrel of salt pork, two hundred-weight of rice, one hundred pounds of hard biscuit, two hundred-weight of flour, twenty pounds of tea and thirty of coffee, and a barrel of sugar; besides which, in the way of condiments and luxuries, their stores included three pounds of table salt, some pepper, a gallon of vinegar, a jar of pickles, a bottle of brandy and some Epsom salts in the view of possible medical contingencies. The skipper also advised their taking a barrel of coarse salt to cure their sealskins with, as well as empty casks to contain what oil they managed to boil down.

These were their own stores; but, imagine the surprise of Fritz and his brother, when they found that Captain Brown had added to their stock the welcome present of a barrel of salt beef and a couple of hams, a good-sized cheese, and some boxes of sardines, besides the preserved fruits and pickled oysters which Eric had already discovered.

Nor did the skipper’s kindness stop here. He had packed up with their things a couple of extra blankets, which they subsequently found of great comfort in the cold weather, in addition to their rugs; a wide piece of tarpaulin to cover their hut with; a few short spars and spare timber; and, lastly, a clock—not to speak of the valuable whale-boat which he had thought of just as he was going away and had presented to them all standing, with oars, mast and sails in complete trim.

“I declare,” said Fritz, “he has been better than a father to us all through. I never heard of such good nature in my life!”

“Nor I,” responded Eric, equally full of gratitude. “Celia, too, before I left Providence, gave me a nice little housewife, wherewith I shall mend all our things when they want repairing, besides which, she made ma a present of quite a little library of books.”

“And I’ve brought all mine as well,” said Fritz, unrolling a large package as he spoke.

“We’ll not be hard up for reading, at any rate,” remarked Eric, laughing joyously. “Food for the mind as well as food for the body, eh?”

“Yes,” said Fritz; “plenty of both.”

“But, how on earth shall we ever be able to get through all this lot of grub?”

“Ah, we won’t find it a bit too much,” said Fritz.

“What, for only us two, brother?” exclaimed Eric in astonishment.

“You forget it has got to last us more than a year, for certain; while, should thePilot’s Bridenot visit us again next autumn, it will be all we may have to depend on for twice that length of time.”

“Oh, I forgot that.”

“If you could see the pile of rations which one regiment alone of men manages to consume in a week, the same as I have, Eric, you would not wonder so much at the amount of our supplies.”

“But think, brother, a regiment is very different to two fellows like us!”

“Just calculate, laddie,” answered the other, “the food so many men would require for only one day; and then for us two, say, for seven hundred days—where’s the difference?”

“Ah, I see,” said Eric, reflecting for a moment. “Perhaps there won’t be too much, after all, eh?”

“Wait till this time next year, and see what we shall have left then, laddie!”

“But, remember the goats and pigs on the top of the mountain which the Tristaner spoke to us about. We’ll have those for food as well, won’t we?”

“Wait till we catch them,” remarked Fritz dryly; adding shortly afterwards, “We’d better stop talking now, however, and see about getting our bed things ready for turning in for the night. Recollect, we’ll have a busy day of it to-morrow.”

“Ah, I shall go up and explore the mountain top, brother, the first thing in the morning,” said Eric impulsively. “I’m dying to see what it’s like!”

“We have more important things to do, before satisfying our curiosity,” observed the other. “Don’t you recollect the garden?”

“I declare I forgot it, brother, for the moment, although there’s no need for us to hurry about that.”

“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 ashore. 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 mass of brushwood and tussock-grass 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 shore, 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 assumed 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 ashore, 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 cluster, 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-grass thicket, which their repeated passage had worn smooth; and, along this they passed 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 grass on to the beach—which they reached in a similar sprawling way to that in which the others had before traversed the intervening space, “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 débris 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 thePilot’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 thePilot’s Bridestill, 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!” ejaculated 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 blustering 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 passer-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-assent 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.”And so it might have been, as he said—beautiful enough for any one!The moon had risen late on the previous night, and when Fritz and Eric turned out it was still shining brightly, with the stars peeping out here and there from the blue vault above; while, the wind having died away, all the shimmering expanse of sea that stretched away to the eastwards out of the bay shone like silver, appearing to be lazily wrapped in slumber, and only giving vent to an occasional long hum like a deeply drawn breath. But, all in a moment, the scene was changed—as if by the wave of an enchanter’s wand.First, a rosy tinge appeared, creeping up from below the horizon imperceptibly and spreading gradually over the whole arc of sky, melting presently into a bright, glowing madder hue that changed to purple, which faded again into a greenish neutral tint that blended with the faint ultramarine blue of the zenith above. The bright moonlight now waning, was replaced for an instant or two only—the transition was so short—by a hazy, misty chiaro-oscuro, which, in another second, was dissolved by the ready effulgence of the solar rays, that darted here, there, and everywhere through it, piercing the curtain of mist to the core as it annihilated it.Then, the sun rose.But no, it did not rise in the ordinary sense of the expression; it literally jumped up at once from the sea, appearing several degrees above the horizon the same instant almost that Fritz and Eric caught sight of it and before they could realise its presence, albeit their eyes were intently fixed all the while on the point where it heralded its coming by the glowing vapours sent before.“Ah!” exclaimed Fritz, drawing a deep breath when this transformation of nature was complete, the light touching up the projecting peaks of the cliff and making a glittering pathway right into the bay. “This sight is enough to inspire any one. It ought to make us set to our work with a good heart!”“Right you are,” responded Eric, who was equally impressed with the magic scene—in spite of his disclaimer about having seen a better sunrise in antarctic seas. “As soon as we’ve had breakfast, for I confess I feel peckish again—it’s on account of going to bed so early, I suppose!—I’m ready to bear a hand as your assistant and help you with the garden. But, who shall be cook? One of the two of us had better take that office permanently, I think; eh, Fritz?”“You can be, if you like,” said the other. “I fancy you have got a slight leaning that way, from what I recollect of you at home.”“When I used to bother poor old Lorischen’s life out of her, by running into the kitchen, eh?”“Yes, I remember it well.”“Ah, that was when I was young,” said Eric, laughing. “I wouldn’t do it now, when I am grown up and know better!”“Grown up, indeed! you’re a fine fellow to talk of being of age with your seventeen years, laddie!”“Never mind that,” retorted Eric; “I mayn’t be as old as you are; but, at all events, I flatter myself I know better how to cook than a sub-lieutenant of the Hanoverian Tirailleurs!”So saying, the lad proceeded to make a fire and put the kettle on in such a dexterous manner that it showed he was to the manner born, so to speak; Fritz helping to aid the progress of the breakfast by fetching water from a pool which the cascade had hollowed out for itself at the point where it finally leapt to level ground and betook itself to the sea in rivulet fashion.The brothers only trenched on their stores to the extent of getting out some coffee and sugar, the remains of their supper being ample to provide them with their morning meal; and, after partaking of this, armed with their wheelbarrow and other agricultural implements, besides a bag of potatoes and some seed for planting, they sallied forth from the hut in the direction of the penguin colony.Here, the Tristaner told them, they would find the best spot for a garden, the soil being not only richer and easier to cultivate but it was the only place that was free from rock, and not overrun by the luxuriant tussock-grass which spread over the rest of the land that was not thicket.Proceeding to the right-hand side of the cliff under which their hut was built, they descended the somewhat sloping and broken ground that led in the direction of the penguin colony, the noise from which grew louder and louder as they advanced, until it culminated in a regular ear-deafening chorus.When they had reached the distance of about a quarter of a mile, they came to a closely grown thicket, principally composed of a species of buckthorn tree that grew to the height of some thirty feet although of very slender trunk, underneath which was a mass of tangled grass and the same sort of debris from the cliff as that whereon their hut stood. The place was overgrown with moss and beautiful ferns, while several thrushes were to be seen amongst the branches of the trees just like those at home, although the brothers did not think they sang as sweetly: they whistled more in the way of the blackbird. The ground here, too, was quite honeycombed with the burrows of the little petrels, and into these their footsteps broke every moment. It was odd to hear the muffled chirp and feel the struggling birds beneath their feet as they stepped over the grass-grown soil. The ground had not the slightest appearance of being undermined by the mole-like petrels, its hollowness being only proved when it gave way to the tread; although, after the first surprise of the two young fellows at thus disturbing the tenants of the burrows, they walked as “gingerly” as they could, so as to avoid hurting the little creatures. The birds, however, seemed too busy with their domestic concerns to take any notice of them.After passing through the strip of wood, which was not of very extensive dimensions, Fritz and Eric found the ground on the other side level and pretty free from vegetation. This open land was just at the angle between the cliffs, occupying a space of perhaps a couple of acres, exactly as the Tristaner had told them; so, here they began at once their operations for laying out their projected garden, which was to be the first task they had to accomplish before settling down, now that they had been saved the trouble of building a house to live in.Eric, impetuous as usual, wanted to dig up and plant the entire lot; but Fritz was more practical, thinking it the wisest plan not to attempt too much at once.“No,” said he, “we had better begin with a small portion at first; and then, when we have planted that, we can easily take in more land. It won’t be such easy work as you think, laddie!”Accordingly, they marked out a space of about twenty yards square; and then, the brothers, taking off their coats, commenced digging at this with considerable energy for some length of time. But, Eric soon discovered that, easy as the thing looked, it was a much tougher job than he had expected, the ground being very hard from the fact of its never having had a spade put into it before; besides which, the exercise was one to which the lad was unaccustomed.“Really, I must rest,” he exclaimed after a bit, his hands being then blistered, while he was bathed in perspiration from head to foot. He did not wish to give in so long as he saw Fritz plodding on laboriously, especially as he had made light of the matter when they began; but now he really had to confess to being beaten. “I declare,” he panted out, half-breathlessly—“my back feels broken, and I couldn’t dig another spadeful to save my life!”“You went at it too hard at first,” said his brother. “Slow and sure is the best in the long run, you know! Why, I haven’t tired myself half as much as you; and, see, I have turned over twice the distance of hard ground that you have.”“Ah, you are used to it,” replied Eric. “I’m more accustomed to ploughing the sea than turning up land! But, I say, Fritz; while you go on digging—that is if you’re not tired—I’ve just thought of something else I can do, so as not to be idle.”“What is that—look on at me working, eh?”“No,” said the lad, laughing at the other’s somewhat ironical question; “I mean doing something really—something that will be helping you and be of service to the garden.”“Well, tell me,” replied Fritz, industriously going on using his spade with the most praiseworthy assiduity, not pausing for a moment even while he was speaking; for, he was anxious to have the ground finished as soon as he could.“I thought that some of the guano from the place where the penguins make their nests would be fine stuff to manure our garden with before we put in the seeds, eh?”“The very thing,” said Fritz. “It’s a capital idea of yours; and I am glad you thought of it, as it never occurred to me. I recollect now, that the Tristaner said they used it for the little gardens we saw at their settlement. It will make our potatoes and cabbages grow finely.”“All right then; shall I get some?”“By all means,” responded Fritz; “and, while you are collecting it, I will go on preparing the ground ready for it; I’ve nearly done half now, so, by the time you get back with the guano I shall have dug up the whole plot.”“Here goes then!” cried Eric; and, away he went, trundling the wheelbarrow along, with a shovel inside it for scraping up the bird refuse and loading the little vehicle—disappearing soon from his brother’s gaze behind the tussock-grass thicket that skirted the extreme end of the garden patch, close to the cliff on the right-hand side of the bay, and exactly opposite to the site of their cottage, this being the place where, as already mentioned, the penguins had established their breeding-place, or “rookery.”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!”

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 mass of brushwood and tussock-grass 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 shore, 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 assumed 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 ashore, 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 cluster, 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-grass thicket, which their repeated passage had worn smooth; and, along this they passed 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 grass on to the beach—which they reached in a similar sprawling way to that in which the others had before traversed the intervening space, “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 débris 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 thePilot’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 thePilot’s Bridestill, 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!” ejaculated 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 blustering 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 passer-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-assent 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.”

And so it might have been, as he said—beautiful enough for any one!

The moon had risen late on the previous night, and when Fritz and Eric turned out it was still shining brightly, with the stars peeping out here and there from the blue vault above; while, the wind having died away, all the shimmering expanse of sea that stretched away to the eastwards out of the bay shone like silver, appearing to be lazily wrapped in slumber, and only giving vent to an occasional long hum like a deeply drawn breath. But, all in a moment, the scene was changed—as if by the wave of an enchanter’s wand.

First, a rosy tinge appeared, creeping up from below the horizon imperceptibly and spreading gradually over the whole arc of sky, melting presently into a bright, glowing madder hue that changed to purple, which faded again into a greenish neutral tint that blended with the faint ultramarine blue of the zenith above. The bright moonlight now waning, was replaced for an instant or two only—the transition was so short—by a hazy, misty chiaro-oscuro, which, in another second, was dissolved by the ready effulgence of the solar rays, that darted here, there, and everywhere through it, piercing the curtain of mist to the core as it annihilated it.

Then, the sun rose.

But no, it did not rise in the ordinary sense of the expression; it literally jumped up at once from the sea, appearing several degrees above the horizon the same instant almost that Fritz and Eric caught sight of it and before they could realise its presence, albeit their eyes were intently fixed all the while on the point where it heralded its coming by the glowing vapours sent before.

“Ah!” exclaimed Fritz, drawing a deep breath when this transformation of nature was complete, the light touching up the projecting peaks of the cliff and making a glittering pathway right into the bay. “This sight is enough to inspire any one. It ought to make us set to our work with a good heart!”

“Right you are,” responded Eric, who was equally impressed with the magic scene—in spite of his disclaimer about having seen a better sunrise in antarctic seas. “As soon as we’ve had breakfast, for I confess I feel peckish again—it’s on account of going to bed so early, I suppose!—I’m ready to bear a hand as your assistant and help you with the garden. But, who shall be cook? One of the two of us had better take that office permanently, I think; eh, Fritz?”

“You can be, if you like,” said the other. “I fancy you have got a slight leaning that way, from what I recollect of you at home.”

“When I used to bother poor old Lorischen’s life out of her, by running into the kitchen, eh?”

“Yes, I remember it well.”

“Ah, that was when I was young,” said Eric, laughing. “I wouldn’t do it now, when I am grown up and know better!”

“Grown up, indeed! you’re a fine fellow to talk of being of age with your seventeen years, laddie!”

“Never mind that,” retorted Eric; “I mayn’t be as old as you are; but, at all events, I flatter myself I know better how to cook than a sub-lieutenant of the Hanoverian Tirailleurs!”

So saying, the lad proceeded to make a fire and put the kettle on in such a dexterous manner that it showed he was to the manner born, so to speak; Fritz helping to aid the progress of the breakfast by fetching water from a pool which the cascade had hollowed out for itself at the point where it finally leapt to level ground and betook itself to the sea in rivulet fashion.

The brothers only trenched on their stores to the extent of getting out some coffee and sugar, the remains of their supper being ample to provide them with their morning meal; and, after partaking of this, armed with their wheelbarrow and other agricultural implements, besides a bag of potatoes and some seed for planting, they sallied forth from the hut in the direction of the penguin colony.

Here, the Tristaner told them, they would find the best spot for a garden, the soil being not only richer and easier to cultivate but it was the only place that was free from rock, and not overrun by the luxuriant tussock-grass which spread over the rest of the land that was not thicket.

Proceeding to the right-hand side of the cliff under which their hut was built, they descended the somewhat sloping and broken ground that led in the direction of the penguin colony, the noise from which grew louder and louder as they advanced, until it culminated in a regular ear-deafening chorus.

When they had reached the distance of about a quarter of a mile, they came to a closely grown thicket, principally composed of a species of buckthorn tree that grew to the height of some thirty feet although of very slender trunk, underneath which was a mass of tangled grass and the same sort of debris from the cliff as that whereon their hut stood. The place was overgrown with moss and beautiful ferns, while several thrushes were to be seen amongst the branches of the trees just like those at home, although the brothers did not think they sang as sweetly: they whistled more in the way of the blackbird. The ground here, too, was quite honeycombed with the burrows of the little petrels, and into these their footsteps broke every moment. It was odd to hear the muffled chirp and feel the struggling birds beneath their feet as they stepped over the grass-grown soil. The ground had not the slightest appearance of being undermined by the mole-like petrels, its hollowness being only proved when it gave way to the tread; although, after the first surprise of the two young fellows at thus disturbing the tenants of the burrows, they walked as “gingerly” as they could, so as to avoid hurting the little creatures. The birds, however, seemed too busy with their domestic concerns to take any notice of them.

After passing through the strip of wood, which was not of very extensive dimensions, Fritz and Eric found the ground on the other side level and pretty free from vegetation. This open land was just at the angle between the cliffs, occupying a space of perhaps a couple of acres, exactly as the Tristaner had told them; so, here they began at once their operations for laying out their projected garden, which was to be the first task they had to accomplish before settling down, now that they had been saved the trouble of building a house to live in.

Eric, impetuous as usual, wanted to dig up and plant the entire lot; but Fritz was more practical, thinking it the wisest plan not to attempt too much at once.

“No,” said he, “we had better begin with a small portion at first; and then, when we have planted that, we can easily take in more land. It won’t be such easy work as you think, laddie!”

Accordingly, they marked out a space of about twenty yards square; and then, the brothers, taking off their coats, commenced digging at this with considerable energy for some length of time. But, Eric soon discovered that, easy as the thing looked, it was a much tougher job than he had expected, the ground being very hard from the fact of its never having had a spade put into it before; besides which, the exercise was one to which the lad was unaccustomed.

“Really, I must rest,” he exclaimed after a bit, his hands being then blistered, while he was bathed in perspiration from head to foot. He did not wish to give in so long as he saw Fritz plodding on laboriously, especially as he had made light of the matter when they began; but now he really had to confess to being beaten. “I declare,” he panted out, half-breathlessly—“my back feels broken, and I couldn’t dig another spadeful to save my life!”

“You went at it too hard at first,” said his brother. “Slow and sure is the best in the long run, you know! Why, I haven’t tired myself half as much as you; and, see, I have turned over twice the distance of hard ground that you have.”

“Ah, you are used to it,” replied Eric. “I’m more accustomed to ploughing the sea than turning up land! But, I say, Fritz; while you go on digging—that is if you’re not tired—I’ve just thought of something else I can do, so as not to be idle.”

“What is that—look on at me working, eh?”

“No,” said the lad, laughing at the other’s somewhat ironical question; “I mean doing something really—something that will be helping you and be of service to the garden.”

“Well, tell me,” replied Fritz, industriously going on using his spade with the most praiseworthy assiduity, not pausing for a moment even while he was speaking; for, he was anxious to have the ground finished as soon as he could.

“I thought that some of the guano from the place where the penguins make their nests would be fine stuff to manure our garden with before we put in the seeds, eh?”

“The very thing,” said Fritz. “It’s a capital idea of yours; and I am glad you thought of it, as it never occurred to me. I recollect now, that the Tristaner said they used it for the little gardens we saw at their settlement. It will make our potatoes and cabbages grow finely.”

“All right then; shall I get some?”

“By all means,” responded Fritz; “and, while you are collecting it, I will go on preparing the ground ready for it; I’ve nearly done half now, so, by the time you get back with the guano I shall have dug up the whole plot.”

“Here goes then!” cried Eric; and, away he went, trundling the wheelbarrow along, with a shovel inside it for scraping up the bird refuse and loading the little vehicle—disappearing soon from his brother’s gaze behind the tussock-grass thicket that skirted the extreme end of the garden patch, close to the cliff on the right-hand side of the bay, and exactly opposite to the site of their cottage, this being the place where, as already mentioned, the penguins had established their breeding-place, or “rookery.”

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.The penguins had made such a determined onslaught on Eric with their heavy beaks and flapping wings, and possibly too with their webbed feet when he was down struggling amongst them, that his clothes were all torn to rags; while his legs and body were bleeding profusely from the bites and scratches he had received. His face alone escaped injury, from the fact of its being buried in the guano débris.Fritz took hold of him, after pulling away the wheelbarrow, and lugged him outside the penguin colony; when the lad, recovering presently, was able to tell the incidents of the adventure, laughing subsequently at its ridiculous aspect. It seemed funny, he explained, that he, a sailor who had battled with the storms of the ocean and feared nothing, should be ignominiously beaten back by a flock of birds that were more stupid than geese!He had thought it easy enough to get the guano for the garden, he said, but he had overrated his ability or rather, underrated the obstacles in his way; for, no sooner had he left the level ground which they had selected for their little clearing, than he found that the tussock-grass, which appeared as light and graceful in the distance as waving corn, grew into a nearly-impenetrable jungle.The root-clumps, or “tussocks” of the grass—whence its name—were two or three feet in width, and grew into a mound about a foot high, the spaces intervening between, which the penguins utilised for their nests, averaging about eighteen inches apart, as if the grass had been almost planted in mathematical order.It would have been hard enough to wheel in the wheelbarrow between the clumps, Eric remarked, if all else had been plain sailing; but since, as he pointed out and as Fritz indeed could see for himself, the stems of the thick grass raised themselves up to the height of seven or eight feet from the roots, besides interweaving their blades with those of adjoining clumps, the difficulty of passing through the thicket was increased tenfold. He had, he said, to bend himself double in stooping so as to push along the wheelbarrow into the birds’ breeding-place, which he did, thinking his path would become more open the farther he got in.So, not to be daunted, Eric trundled along the little vehicle right into the heart of the birds’ colony, beating down the grass as he advanced and crushing hundreds of eggs in his progress, as well as wheeling over those birds that could not, or stupidly would not, get out of his way; when, as he was beginning to load up the wheelbarrow with a mass of the finer sort of guano which he had scraped up, the penguins, which had been all the while grumbling terribly at the intruder who was thus desolating their domain—waiting to “get up steam,” as the lad expressed it—made a concerted rush upon him all together, just in the same manner as they appeared always to enter and leave the water.“In a moment,” Eric said, “the wheelbarrow got bowsed over, when I managed, worse luck, to fall underneath; and then, finding I couldn’t get up again, I hailed you, brother.”“I came at once,” interposed Fritz, “the moment I heard you call out.”“Well, I suppose you did, old fellow,” said Eric; “but whether you did or didn’t, in another five minutes I believe it would have been all up with me, for I felt as if I were strangled, lying down there on my face in that beastly stuff. It seemed to have a sort of take-away-your-breath feeling, like smelling-salts; and, besides, the penguins kicked up such a hideous row all the while that I thought I would go mad. I never heard such a racket in my life anywhere before, I declare!”“But they’ve bitten you, too, awfully,” remarked Fritz sympathisingly. “Look, your poor legs are all bleeding.”“Oh, hang my legs, brother!” replied the other. “They’ll soon come right, never fear, when they have had a good wash in salt water. It was the noise of the blessed birds that bothered me more than all their pecking; and, I can say truly of them, as of an old dog, that their bark is worse than their bite!”So chuckling, the lad appeared to think no more of it; albeit he had not escaped scathless, and had been really in imminent peril a moment before. “The penguins do bark, don’t they, Fritz?” he presently asked when he had stopped laughing.“Yes,” said his brother, “I don’t think we can describe the sounds they make as anything else than barking. Talking of dogs, I wish I had my old Gelert here; he would soon have made a diversion in your favour and routed the penguins!”“Would he?” exclaimed Eric in a doubting tone, still rather sore in his mind at having been forced to beat a retreat before his feathered assailants. “I fancy the best dog in the world would have been cowed by those vicious brutes; for, if he didn’t turn tail, he would be pecked to death in a minute!”Eric was not far wrong, as a fine setter, belonging to one of the officers of HMSChallenger, when that vessel was engaged in surveying the islands of the South Atlantic, during her scientific voyage in 1874, was torn to pieces by the penguins in the same way that Eric was assailed, before it could be rescued.“Never mind,” said Fritz, “I wish dear old Gelert were here all the same.”“So do I,” chorussed Eric, jumping up on his legs and shaking himself, to see whether his bones might not have received some damage in the affray. “We should have rare fun setting him at the penguins and interrupting their triumphant marches up and down the beach!” And he raised his fist threateningly at his late foes.“Do you know,” observed Fritz, who had been cogitating awhile, “I think I see the reason for their methodical habit of going to and from the water.”“Indeed?” said Eric.“Yes. Don’t you recollect how an equal number seem always to come out from the rookery and proceed down the beach when the other batches land from the sea, just as if they took it in rotation to go fishing?”“Of course. Why, Captain Brown specially pointed that out to us.”“Well,” said Fritz, “the reason for that is, that the males and females mind the nests in turn, just as you sailors keep watch on board ship. First, let us say, the gentlemen penguins go off to the sea to have a swim, and see what they can catch; and then, at the expiration of a fixed time, these return to the shore and take charge of the nests, sitting on the eggs while their wives, whom they thus relieve for a spell, have a spell off, so as to get a mouthful of fresh air—”“Water, you mean,” interposed Eric, jokingly.“All right, water then, and perhaps a fish or two as well; after which they come back to attend to their own legitimate department. Look now at that group there, just in front of us?”Eric glanced towards the spot where his brother directed his attention, and noticed a party of penguins returning from the sea. These separated as soon as they approached the line of nests, different individuals sidling up to the sitting birds and giving their partners a peck with their beaks, by way of a hint, barking out some word of explanation at the same time. In another moment, the home-coming penguin had wedged itself into the place of the other, which struggling on to its feet then proceeded outside the thicket, where, being joined by others whose guard had been thus similarly relieved, the fresh group proceeded together, in a hurried, scrambling sort of run, to the beach, whence they shortly plunged into the sea, having, however, their usual gabbling colloquy first in concert before taking to the water.“They’re a funny lot,” said Eric; “still, they’re not going to get the better of me, for I intend to load the wheelbarrow with their guano, whether they like it or not!”“I wouldn’t disturb them again, if I were you,” observed Fritz. “They seem to have quieted down, and do not mind our presence now.”“I won’t trouble them, for I shall not go inside their rookery,” said Eric. “I only intend to skirt round the place, and see what I can pick up outside.”“Very well then, I will go on digging the garden, which I have been neglecting all this time, if you will get the manure. I should like to plant some of our potatoes to-day, before knocking off work, if we can manage it.”“All right, fire away; I will soon come and join you,” said Eric, and the brothers separated again—Fritz proceeding back to the ground he had been digging, which now began to look quite tidy; while the sailor lad, lifting up the handles of the wheelbarrow, trundled it off once more along the edge of the tussock-grass thicket, stopping every now and again to shovel up the guano, until he had collected a full load, when he wheeled his way back to where Fritz was working away still hard at the potato patch.A piece of ground twenty yards long by the same in breadth is not easy to dig over in a day, even to the most industrious toiler, and so Fritz found it; for, in spite of the interruption his brother had suffered from on his first start after the manure from the bird colony, the lad managed to cover the whole of the plot they had marked out with the fertilising compound, which he wheeled up load after load, long before he had accomplished half his task, although he dug away earnestly.Fritz had been a little more sanguine than he usually was. He thought he could have finished the job before the middle of the day; but, when it got late on in the afternoon and the sun gave notice as he sank behind the western cliff that the evening was drawing nigh, there was still much to finish; and so, much to the elder brother’s chagrin, the task had to be abandoned for the day in an incomplete state.“Never mind,” he said to Eric—when, putting their spades and other tools into the wheelbarrow, they trundled it homeward in turn, like as their friends the penguins practised their domestic duties—“we’ll get it done by to-morrow, if we only stick to it.”“I’m sure I will do my best, brother,” responded Eric; “but, really, I do hate digging. The man who invented that horrible thing, a spade, ought to be keel-hauled; that’s how I would serve him!”“Is that anything like what the penguins did to you this morning?” asked Fritz with a chuckle.“Pretty much the same,” said Eric, grinning at the allusion. “I declare I had almost forgotten all about that! However, I’ll now go and get a change of clothes, and have a bath in the sea before sitting down comfortably to our evening meal;” and, anxious to carry out this resolve at once, the lad set off running towards the hut with the wheelbarrow before him, he having the last turn of the little vehicle.“There never was so impetuous a fellow as Eric,” Fritz said to himself, seeing the lad start off in this fashion. “Himmel, he is a regular young scatter-brain, as old Lorischen used to call him!”“Pray be quick about your bath,” he called out after him. “I will get the coffee ready by the time you come back.”“Good!” shouted Eric in return. “Mind and make it strong too; for, I’m sure I shall want something to sustain me after all my exertions!”The day terminated without any further incident; although the wind having calmed down, the young fellows heard the penguins much more plainly through the night than previously. Still, this did not much affect their rest; for in the morning they turned out fresh and hearty for another day’s experience of gardening.But, again, they were unable to finish the plot of land properly on this second day, to Fritz’s satisfaction, so as to begin planting their seeds. The ground was so hard and there were such numbers of roots and weeds to remove from the soil, that it took them up to the middle of the afternoon of the third day ere their little plot could be said to be clear of all extraneous matter. Then, however, it was really ready for the reception of their seedling potatoes and other vegetables, with the guano well dug in.“Hurrah!” exclaimed Fritz, as he and Eric began fixing a piece of line across the fresh mould, so as to be able to make the furrows straight for the potatoes, which they had ready cut in a basket, only pieces with an “eye” in them being selected, “now, we’ll soon be finished at last! When we’ve put in the cabbage seed and onions, I think we’ll have a holiday for the rest of the day.”“Right you are,” said Eric, in high glee at the prospect of a little respite from the arduous toil they had been engaged in almost since they had landed. He would have struck work long before, had it not been for Fritz labouring on so steadily, which made him ashamed to remain idle. “I tell you what we’ll do to celebrate the event, now the garden is done. We will have a feast there.”“I don’t know where that’s to come from,” observed Fritz in his sober way, just then beginning to place carefully the pieces of potato in the drills prepared for them. “I don’t think there’s much chance of our having any feasting here.”“Oh, indeed,” replied Eric; “am I not cook?”“Well, laddie, I haven’t noticed any great display of your skill yet since we landed,” said Fritz dryly.“Ah, we’ve been too busy; you just wait till I have time, like this afternoon. Then you shall see what you shall see!”“No doubt,” said Fritz, laughing at this sapient declaration. “However, I assure you, brother mine and most considerate of cooks, I’ll not be sorry to have a change of diet from the cold salt pork and biscuit on which we have fared all the time we’ve been gardening.”“How could I cook anything else, when you wanted me here?” replied Eric indignantly, handing the last piece of potato to put in the sole remaining drill. “I couldn’t be up at the hut with my saucepans and down here helping you at the same time, eh?”“No,” said Fritz, proceeding to give the plot a final rake over; after which he sowed some cabbage seed and onions in a separate patch, while Eric put in the peas and scarlet runners which the skipper had given him. “We’ll consider the past a blank, laddie. See what you can do with your saucepans to-day; you’ve got the whole afternoon before you.”“All right,” replied Eric. “Only, you must promise not to interfere with me, you know; mind that, old fellow!”“What, I have the temerity to offer advice to such a grand cuisinier as the noble ex-midshipman? no, not if I know myself.”“Thanks, Herr Lieutenant,” said Eric, with a deferential bow; “I will summon your lordship when the dinner is ready.”With this parting shot, the lad went off laughing towards the hut. Fritz proceeded down to the shore; and, in order that he might keep his promise to Eric of not disturbing him, he determined to devote his time to watching the penguins, so as to get up an appetite for the forthcoming banquet—although the hard work he had just gone through rendered any stimulus to eating hardly necessary. Indeed, Fritz would have been well enough satisfied to have sat down and demolished a fair quantity of the despised cold pork and biscuits long before Eric summoned him up to the hut, which he did presently, with a hail as loud as if he were calling “all hands” at sea, in a heavy squall.“Ahoy, Herr Lieutenant!” shouted out the lad in his funny way. “Your gracious majesty is served!”—screeching out the words so distinctly that, though he was on the opposite side of the valley, the portentous announcement sounded to Fritz as if it had been bellowed in his ears.“I’m coming,” he answered; and, with no lagging footsteps, he quickly hastened towards the left cliff, where in front of the hut he could see Master Eric had made the most elaborate preparations in his power for the promised feast. The lad had even gone so far as to spread the piece of tarpaulin which the skipper had given them, on the ground in lieu of a tablecloth!Everything looked charming.Eric had arranged some plates and a couple of dishes round the tarpaulin with great artistic effect, and a carving knife and fork before the place where he motioned Fritz to seat himself. The lad’s own position, as host, was in front of a large mess tin which was covered with a cloth. A most agreeable odour filled the air, albeit the faint smell as of burnt meat somewhat struck Fritz as Eric proceeded to take off the covering cloth with a flourish.“Well, Monsieur Cuisinier, what is the bill of fare?” asked the elder brother with a gratified smile, the unaccustomed smell of a hot dinner almost making his mouth water before he knew what he was going to have.“Roast beef to begin with,” announced Master Eric pompously.“Himmel!” exclaimed Fritz, “roast beef! How have you managed to provide that?” His heart sank within him as he asked the almost unnecessary question; for, quickly came the answer he feared.“Oh,” said Eric in an off-hand way, “I opened the cask Captain Brown gave us and roasted a piece over the fire.”“But, that was salt meat!” ejaculated Fritz in consternation.“Well, what matter?” rejoined Eric; “I suppose it was as good to roast as any other. Besides, we didn’t have any fresh.”Fritz heaved a sigh of despair.“Let us try it, anyhow,” he said in a melancholy tone, and Eric having, carved off with extreme difficulty a knob—it could be called nothing else—of the black mass in the mess tin he had before him, handed the plate containing it over to Fritz, who, sawing off a fragment, endeavoured to chew it unsuccessfully and then had finally to eject it from his mouth.“Good heavens, Eric!” he exclaimed, “it’s as hard as a brickbat, as salt as brine, and burnt up as thoroughly as a piece of coke. How could you even think of trying to roast a bit of salt junk? Why, your own experience of the article on board ship should have told you better!”“Well, I know it is tough when boiled; but I fancied it might be better roasted for a change. I’m very sorry, old fellow, but, still, we haven’t come to the end of our resources yet; I have got another dish to surprise you.”“I hope not in the same way!” said Fritz with a shudder. “What is the other string to your bow, eh, Mr Cook?”“A stew,” replied Eric laconically.“Ho, that sounds better,” said his brother, the complacent look which had stolen over his face on sitting down to the banquet now returning again in the expectation of having something savoury at last. “A stew, eh? Why, that used to be my favourite dish at home; don’t you remember, laddie?”“Yes, I remember,” responded Eric, not quite so joyously as his brother evidently expected; “but,” he added hesitatingly, “you’ll find this a little different, because, ah, you know, ah, I hadn’t got all the proper things. Still, it’s very nice, very nice indeed!”The amateur cook brought out the last words with great earnestness, as if wishing to impress Fritz with the fact that, although the dish might not be quite what he expected, yet it would be certainly “tasty”—that is, according to his notions!It was; for, hardly had Fritz tasted a spoonful of it, than he spat it out again, making the most terrible faces.“Why, this is worse than the other!” he cried rather angrily. “What on earth have you made it of. Eric?”“Well, I put in some pork and the tinned oysters—”“That mixture would be almost enough to settle one!” said Fritz, interrupting him. “Anything else?”“Oh, yes. As there were only a few potatoes left from those we used for planting in the garden I put them in; and, as I had no other vegetables, I also shook in some preserved peaches, and—”“There, that will do,” shouted Fritz, quite put out at having his expected dinner treat spoilt in such a fashion,—“salt pork, pickled oysters, and preserved peaches,—good heavens! The stew only wanted some cheese to be added to make it perfect.”“I did put some in,” said Eric innocently.This naïve acknowledgment quite restored Fritz’s good humour, and he burst out laughing; his anger and disgust dispelled at once by the comical confession.“If ever I let you cook for me again,” he observed presently when he was able to speak again, “I’ll—yes, I will eat a stewed penguin, there!”Eric laughed, too, at this; although he remarked, wisely enough, “Perhaps you might have to eat worse than that, old fellow!”“I don’t know what could be,” said Fritz.“Nothing!” curtly replied Eric, the truism silencing his brother for the moment and setting him thinking; but he presently spoke again to the point at issue.“Is there nothing left for us to eat?” he asked. “I’m famishing.”“There’s the cheese and some raw ham if you can manage with those,” said Eric sadly, quite disheartened at the failure of all his grand preparations for giving his brother a treat.“Capitally,” replied Fritz, “fetch them out, and let us make a good square meal. We can have some coffee afterwards. Next time, laddie,” he added to cheer up Eric, “I dare say you’ll do better.”The lad was somewhat relieved at his brother taking the matter so good-humouredly, and quickly brought out the cheese and ham, which with some biscuits served them very well in place of the rejected viands; and, soon, the two were chatting away together again in their old affectionate way as if no misunderstanding had come between them, talking of home and old familiar scenes and recollections of Lubeck.While they were yet sitting in front of the hut, over their coffee, the setting sun cast the shadow of the cliff right before their feet; and, at the very edge of the craggy outline, they perceived the shadow of something else which was in motion.This somewhat aroused their attention and made them look up towards the heights above the waterfall.What was their astonishment, there, to see a large animal, which, in the strong light behind it from the descending orb, appeared almost of gigantic proportions.The beast appeared to be right over their heads; and, as they looked up, it seemed as if about to jump down on them!

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.

The penguins had made such a determined onslaught on Eric with their heavy beaks and flapping wings, and possibly too with their webbed feet when he was down struggling amongst them, that his clothes were all torn to rags; while his legs and body were bleeding profusely from the bites and scratches he had received. His face alone escaped injury, from the fact of its being buried in the guano débris.

Fritz took hold of him, after pulling away the wheelbarrow, and lugged him outside the penguin colony; when the lad, recovering presently, was able to tell the incidents of the adventure, laughing subsequently at its ridiculous aspect. It seemed funny, he explained, that he, a sailor who had battled with the storms of the ocean and feared nothing, should be ignominiously beaten back by a flock of birds that were more stupid than geese!

He had thought it easy enough to get the guano for the garden, he said, but he had overrated his ability or rather, underrated the obstacles in his way; for, no sooner had he left the level ground which they had selected for their little clearing, than he found that the tussock-grass, which appeared as light and graceful in the distance as waving corn, grew into a nearly-impenetrable jungle.

The root-clumps, or “tussocks” of the grass—whence its name—were two or three feet in width, and grew into a mound about a foot high, the spaces intervening between, which the penguins utilised for their nests, averaging about eighteen inches apart, as if the grass had been almost planted in mathematical order.

It would have been hard enough to wheel in the wheelbarrow between the clumps, Eric remarked, if all else had been plain sailing; but since, as he pointed out and as Fritz indeed could see for himself, the stems of the thick grass raised themselves up to the height of seven or eight feet from the roots, besides interweaving their blades with those of adjoining clumps, the difficulty of passing through the thicket was increased tenfold. He had, he said, to bend himself double in stooping so as to push along the wheelbarrow into the birds’ breeding-place, which he did, thinking his path would become more open the farther he got in.

So, not to be daunted, Eric trundled along the little vehicle right into the heart of the birds’ colony, beating down the grass as he advanced and crushing hundreds of eggs in his progress, as well as wheeling over those birds that could not, or stupidly would not, get out of his way; when, as he was beginning to load up the wheelbarrow with a mass of the finer sort of guano which he had scraped up, the penguins, which had been all the while grumbling terribly at the intruder who was thus desolating their domain—waiting to “get up steam,” as the lad expressed it—made a concerted rush upon him all together, just in the same manner as they appeared always to enter and leave the water.

“In a moment,” Eric said, “the wheelbarrow got bowsed over, when I managed, worse luck, to fall underneath; and then, finding I couldn’t get up again, I hailed you, brother.”

“I came at once,” interposed Fritz, “the moment I heard you call out.”

“Well, I suppose you did, old fellow,” said Eric; “but whether you did or didn’t, in another five minutes I believe it would have been all up with me, for I felt as if I were strangled, lying down there on my face in that beastly stuff. It seemed to have a sort of take-away-your-breath feeling, like smelling-salts; and, besides, the penguins kicked up such a hideous row all the while that I thought I would go mad. I never heard such a racket in my life anywhere before, I declare!”

“But they’ve bitten you, too, awfully,” remarked Fritz sympathisingly. “Look, your poor legs are all bleeding.”

“Oh, hang my legs, brother!” replied the other. “They’ll soon come right, never fear, when they have had a good wash in salt water. It was the noise of the blessed birds that bothered me more than all their pecking; and, I can say truly of them, as of an old dog, that their bark is worse than their bite!”

So chuckling, the lad appeared to think no more of it; albeit he had not escaped scathless, and had been really in imminent peril a moment before. “The penguins do bark, don’t they, Fritz?” he presently asked when he had stopped laughing.

“Yes,” said his brother, “I don’t think we can describe the sounds they make as anything else than barking. Talking of dogs, I wish I had my old Gelert here; he would soon have made a diversion in your favour and routed the penguins!”

“Would he?” exclaimed Eric in a doubting tone, still rather sore in his mind at having been forced to beat a retreat before his feathered assailants. “I fancy the best dog in the world would have been cowed by those vicious brutes; for, if he didn’t turn tail, he would be pecked to death in a minute!”

Eric was not far wrong, as a fine setter, belonging to one of the officers of HMSChallenger, when that vessel was engaged in surveying the islands of the South Atlantic, during her scientific voyage in 1874, was torn to pieces by the penguins in the same way that Eric was assailed, before it could be rescued.

“Never mind,” said Fritz, “I wish dear old Gelert were here all the same.”

“So do I,” chorussed Eric, jumping up on his legs and shaking himself, to see whether his bones might not have received some damage in the affray. “We should have rare fun setting him at the penguins and interrupting their triumphant marches up and down the beach!” And he raised his fist threateningly at his late foes.

“Do you know,” observed Fritz, who had been cogitating awhile, “I think I see the reason for their methodical habit of going to and from the water.”

“Indeed?” said Eric.

“Yes. Don’t you recollect how an equal number seem always to come out from the rookery and proceed down the beach when the other batches land from the sea, just as if they took it in rotation to go fishing?”

“Of course. Why, Captain Brown specially pointed that out to us.”

“Well,” said Fritz, “the reason for that is, that the males and females mind the nests in turn, just as you sailors keep watch on board ship. First, let us say, the gentlemen penguins go off to the sea to have a swim, and see what they can catch; and then, at the expiration of a fixed time, these return to the shore and take charge of the nests, sitting on the eggs while their wives, whom they thus relieve for a spell, have a spell off, so as to get a mouthful of fresh air—”

“Water, you mean,” interposed Eric, jokingly.

“All right, water then, and perhaps a fish or two as well; after which they come back to attend to their own legitimate department. Look now at that group there, just in front of us?”

Eric glanced towards the spot where his brother directed his attention, and noticed a party of penguins returning from the sea. These separated as soon as they approached the line of nests, different individuals sidling up to the sitting birds and giving their partners a peck with their beaks, by way of a hint, barking out some word of explanation at the same time. In another moment, the home-coming penguin had wedged itself into the place of the other, which struggling on to its feet then proceeded outside the thicket, where, being joined by others whose guard had been thus similarly relieved, the fresh group proceeded together, in a hurried, scrambling sort of run, to the beach, whence they shortly plunged into the sea, having, however, their usual gabbling colloquy first in concert before taking to the water.

“They’re a funny lot,” said Eric; “still, they’re not going to get the better of me, for I intend to load the wheelbarrow with their guano, whether they like it or not!”

“I wouldn’t disturb them again, if I were you,” observed Fritz. “They seem to have quieted down, and do not mind our presence now.”

“I won’t trouble them, for I shall not go inside their rookery,” said Eric. “I only intend to skirt round the place, and see what I can pick up outside.”

“Very well then, I will go on digging the garden, which I have been neglecting all this time, if you will get the manure. I should like to plant some of our potatoes to-day, before knocking off work, if we can manage it.”

“All right, fire away; I will soon come and join you,” said Eric, and the brothers separated again—Fritz proceeding back to the ground he had been digging, which now began to look quite tidy; while the sailor lad, lifting up the handles of the wheelbarrow, trundled it off once more along the edge of the tussock-grass thicket, stopping every now and again to shovel up the guano, until he had collected a full load, when he wheeled his way back to where Fritz was working away still hard at the potato patch.

A piece of ground twenty yards long by the same in breadth is not easy to dig over in a day, even to the most industrious toiler, and so Fritz found it; for, in spite of the interruption his brother had suffered from on his first start after the manure from the bird colony, the lad managed to cover the whole of the plot they had marked out with the fertilising compound, which he wheeled up load after load, long before he had accomplished half his task, although he dug away earnestly.

Fritz had been a little more sanguine than he usually was. He thought he could have finished the job before the middle of the day; but, when it got late on in the afternoon and the sun gave notice as he sank behind the western cliff that the evening was drawing nigh, there was still much to finish; and so, much to the elder brother’s chagrin, the task had to be abandoned for the day in an incomplete state.

“Never mind,” he said to Eric—when, putting their spades and other tools into the wheelbarrow, they trundled it homeward in turn, like as their friends the penguins practised their domestic duties—“we’ll get it done by to-morrow, if we only stick to it.”

“I’m sure I will do my best, brother,” responded Eric; “but, really, I do hate digging. The man who invented that horrible thing, a spade, ought to be keel-hauled; that’s how I would serve him!”

“Is that anything like what the penguins did to you this morning?” asked Fritz with a chuckle.

“Pretty much the same,” said Eric, grinning at the allusion. “I declare I had almost forgotten all about that! However, I’ll now go and get a change of clothes, and have a bath in the sea before sitting down comfortably to our evening meal;” and, anxious to carry out this resolve at once, the lad set off running towards the hut with the wheelbarrow before him, he having the last turn of the little vehicle.

“There never was so impetuous a fellow as Eric,” Fritz said to himself, seeing the lad start off in this fashion. “Himmel, he is a regular young scatter-brain, as old Lorischen used to call him!”

“Pray be quick about your bath,” he called out after him. “I will get the coffee ready by the time you come back.”

“Good!” shouted Eric in return. “Mind and make it strong too; for, I’m sure I shall want something to sustain me after all my exertions!”

The day terminated without any further incident; although the wind having calmed down, the young fellows heard the penguins much more plainly through the night than previously. Still, this did not much affect their rest; for in the morning they turned out fresh and hearty for another day’s experience of gardening.

But, again, they were unable to finish the plot of land properly on this second day, to Fritz’s satisfaction, so as to begin planting their seeds. The ground was so hard and there were such numbers of roots and weeds to remove from the soil, that it took them up to the middle of the afternoon of the third day ere their little plot could be said to be clear of all extraneous matter. Then, however, it was really ready for the reception of their seedling potatoes and other vegetables, with the guano well dug in.

“Hurrah!” exclaimed Fritz, as he and Eric began fixing a piece of line across the fresh mould, so as to be able to make the furrows straight for the potatoes, which they had ready cut in a basket, only pieces with an “eye” in them being selected, “now, we’ll soon be finished at last! When we’ve put in the cabbage seed and onions, I think we’ll have a holiday for the rest of the day.”

“Right you are,” said Eric, in high glee at the prospect of a little respite from the arduous toil they had been engaged in almost since they had landed. He would have struck work long before, had it not been for Fritz labouring on so steadily, which made him ashamed to remain idle. “I tell you what we’ll do to celebrate the event, now the garden is done. We will have a feast there.”

“I don’t know where that’s to come from,” observed Fritz in his sober way, just then beginning to place carefully the pieces of potato in the drills prepared for them. “I don’t think there’s much chance of our having any feasting here.”

“Oh, indeed,” replied Eric; “am I not cook?”

“Well, laddie, I haven’t noticed any great display of your skill yet since we landed,” said Fritz dryly.

“Ah, we’ve been too busy; you just wait till I have time, like this afternoon. Then you shall see what you shall see!”

“No doubt,” said Fritz, laughing at this sapient declaration. “However, I assure you, brother mine and most considerate of cooks, I’ll not be sorry to have a change of diet from the cold salt pork and biscuit on which we have fared all the time we’ve been gardening.”

“How could I cook anything else, when you wanted me here?” replied Eric indignantly, handing the last piece of potato to put in the sole remaining drill. “I couldn’t be up at the hut with my saucepans and down here helping you at the same time, eh?”

“No,” said Fritz, proceeding to give the plot a final rake over; after which he sowed some cabbage seed and onions in a separate patch, while Eric put in the peas and scarlet runners which the skipper had given him. “We’ll consider the past a blank, laddie. See what you can do with your saucepans to-day; you’ve got the whole afternoon before you.”

“All right,” replied Eric. “Only, you must promise not to interfere with me, you know; mind that, old fellow!”

“What, I have the temerity to offer advice to such a grand cuisinier as the noble ex-midshipman? no, not if I know myself.”

“Thanks, Herr Lieutenant,” said Eric, with a deferential bow; “I will summon your lordship when the dinner is ready.”

With this parting shot, the lad went off laughing towards the hut. Fritz proceeded down to the shore; and, in order that he might keep his promise to Eric of not disturbing him, he determined to devote his time to watching the penguins, so as to get up an appetite for the forthcoming banquet—although the hard work he had just gone through rendered any stimulus to eating hardly necessary. Indeed, Fritz would have been well enough satisfied to have sat down and demolished a fair quantity of the despised cold pork and biscuits long before Eric summoned him up to the hut, which he did presently, with a hail as loud as if he were calling “all hands” at sea, in a heavy squall.

“Ahoy, Herr Lieutenant!” shouted out the lad in his funny way. “Your gracious majesty is served!”—screeching out the words so distinctly that, though he was on the opposite side of the valley, the portentous announcement sounded to Fritz as if it had been bellowed in his ears.

“I’m coming,” he answered; and, with no lagging footsteps, he quickly hastened towards the left cliff, where in front of the hut he could see Master Eric had made the most elaborate preparations in his power for the promised feast. The lad had even gone so far as to spread the piece of tarpaulin which the skipper had given them, on the ground in lieu of a tablecloth!

Everything looked charming.

Eric had arranged some plates and a couple of dishes round the tarpaulin with great artistic effect, and a carving knife and fork before the place where he motioned Fritz to seat himself. The lad’s own position, as host, was in front of a large mess tin which was covered with a cloth. A most agreeable odour filled the air, albeit the faint smell as of burnt meat somewhat struck Fritz as Eric proceeded to take off the covering cloth with a flourish.

“Well, Monsieur Cuisinier, what is the bill of fare?” asked the elder brother with a gratified smile, the unaccustomed smell of a hot dinner almost making his mouth water before he knew what he was going to have.

“Roast beef to begin with,” announced Master Eric pompously.

“Himmel!” exclaimed Fritz, “roast beef! How have you managed to provide that?” His heart sank within him as he asked the almost unnecessary question; for, quickly came the answer he feared.

“Oh,” said Eric in an off-hand way, “I opened the cask Captain Brown gave us and roasted a piece over the fire.”

“But, that was salt meat!” ejaculated Fritz in consternation.

“Well, what matter?” rejoined Eric; “I suppose it was as good to roast as any other. Besides, we didn’t have any fresh.”

Fritz heaved a sigh of despair.

“Let us try it, anyhow,” he said in a melancholy tone, and Eric having, carved off with extreme difficulty a knob—it could be called nothing else—of the black mass in the mess tin he had before him, handed the plate containing it over to Fritz, who, sawing off a fragment, endeavoured to chew it unsuccessfully and then had finally to eject it from his mouth.

“Good heavens, Eric!” he exclaimed, “it’s as hard as a brickbat, as salt as brine, and burnt up as thoroughly as a piece of coke. How could you even think of trying to roast a bit of salt junk? Why, your own experience of the article on board ship should have told you better!”

“Well, I know it is tough when boiled; but I fancied it might be better roasted for a change. I’m very sorry, old fellow, but, still, we haven’t come to the end of our resources yet; I have got another dish to surprise you.”

“I hope not in the same way!” said Fritz with a shudder. “What is the other string to your bow, eh, Mr Cook?”

“A stew,” replied Eric laconically.

“Ho, that sounds better,” said his brother, the complacent look which had stolen over his face on sitting down to the banquet now returning again in the expectation of having something savoury at last. “A stew, eh? Why, that used to be my favourite dish at home; don’t you remember, laddie?”

“Yes, I remember,” responded Eric, not quite so joyously as his brother evidently expected; “but,” he added hesitatingly, “you’ll find this a little different, because, ah, you know, ah, I hadn’t got all the proper things. Still, it’s very nice, very nice indeed!”

The amateur cook brought out the last words with great earnestness, as if wishing to impress Fritz with the fact that, although the dish might not be quite what he expected, yet it would be certainly “tasty”—that is, according to his notions!

It was; for, hardly had Fritz tasted a spoonful of it, than he spat it out again, making the most terrible faces.

“Why, this is worse than the other!” he cried rather angrily. “What on earth have you made it of. Eric?”

“Well, I put in some pork and the tinned oysters—”

“That mixture would be almost enough to settle one!” said Fritz, interrupting him. “Anything else?”

“Oh, yes. As there were only a few potatoes left from those we used for planting in the garden I put them in; and, as I had no other vegetables, I also shook in some preserved peaches, and—”

“There, that will do,” shouted Fritz, quite put out at having his expected dinner treat spoilt in such a fashion,—“salt pork, pickled oysters, and preserved peaches,—good heavens! The stew only wanted some cheese to be added to make it perfect.”

“I did put some in,” said Eric innocently.

This naïve acknowledgment quite restored Fritz’s good humour, and he burst out laughing; his anger and disgust dispelled at once by the comical confession.

“If ever I let you cook for me again,” he observed presently when he was able to speak again, “I’ll—yes, I will eat a stewed penguin, there!”

Eric laughed, too, at this; although he remarked, wisely enough, “Perhaps you might have to eat worse than that, old fellow!”

“I don’t know what could be,” said Fritz.

“Nothing!” curtly replied Eric, the truism silencing his brother for the moment and setting him thinking; but he presently spoke again to the point at issue.

“Is there nothing left for us to eat?” he asked. “I’m famishing.”

“There’s the cheese and some raw ham if you can manage with those,” said Eric sadly, quite disheartened at the failure of all his grand preparations for giving his brother a treat.

“Capitally,” replied Fritz, “fetch them out, and let us make a good square meal. We can have some coffee afterwards. Next time, laddie,” he added to cheer up Eric, “I dare say you’ll do better.”

The lad was somewhat relieved at his brother taking the matter so good-humouredly, and quickly brought out the cheese and ham, which with some biscuits served them very well in place of the rejected viands; and, soon, the two were chatting away together again in their old affectionate way as if no misunderstanding had come between them, talking of home and old familiar scenes and recollections of Lubeck.

While they were yet sitting in front of the hut, over their coffee, the setting sun cast the shadow of the cliff right before their feet; and, at the very edge of the craggy outline, they perceived the shadow of something else which was in motion.

This somewhat aroused their attention and made them look up towards the heights above the waterfall.

What was their astonishment, there, to see a large animal, which, in the strong light behind it from the descending orb, appeared almost of gigantic proportions.

The beast appeared to be right over their heads; and, as they looked up, it seemed as if about to jump down on them!

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