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 debris at the foot of the cliffs, just like rabbits, popping in and out of their subterranean retreats in the same way as people travelling in the American backwoods have noticed the "prairie dogs" do; but, both the brothers, as well as the men from the _Pilot's Bride_, were too busy getting the hut finished while daylight lasted and carrying up the stores from the beach to the little building afterwards, to devote much time to anything else.
When, too, the captain and seamen returned on board and the ship sailed, leaving Fritz and Eric alone, they had quite enough to occupy all their time with unpacking their things and preparing for the night, without thinking of the penguins; although they could hear their confused barking noise in the distance, long after nightfall, above the singing of the wind overhead through the waterfall gully and the dull roar of the surf breaking against the western side of the coast.

The brothers, however, were too tired to keep awake long, soon sinking into a heavy sleep that was undisturbed till the early morning.
But, when day broke, the penguins would not allow their existence to be any longer forgotten, the brothers being soon made aware of their neighbourhood.
Eric, the sailor lad, accustomed to early calls at sea when on watch duty, was the first to awake.
"Himmel!" he exclaimed, stretching his arms out and giving a mighty kick out with his legs so as to thoroughly rouse himself.