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