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 a