"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.