best take the boat-hook
an' a couple of oars."

"What for?" ask the others, in some surprise.

"You'll larn, by-an'-bye," answers the old salt, who, like most of his
kind, is somewhat given to mystification.

In accordance with this suggestion, each of the boys arms himself with
an oar, leaving Seagriff the boat-hook.

They enter among the tussac, and after tramping through it a hundred
yards or so, they come upon a "penguinnery," sure enough. It is a grand
one, extending over acres, with hundreds of nests--if a slight
depression in the naked surface of the ground deserves to be so called.
But no eggs are in any of them, fresh or otherwise; instead, in each
sits a young, half-fledged bird, and one only, as this kind of penguin
lays and hatches but a single egg. Many of the nests have old birds
standing beside them, each occupied in feeding its solitary chick,
duckling, gosling, or whatever the penguin offspring may be properly
called. This being of itself a curious spectacle, the disappointed
egg-hunters stop awhile to witness it, for they are still outside the
bounds of the "penguinnery," and the birds have as yet taken no notice
of them. By each nest is a little mound, on which the mother stands
perched, from time to time projecting her head outward and upward, at
the same time giving forth a queer chattering noise, half quack, half
bray, with the air of a stump orator haranguing an open-air audience.
Meanwhile, the youngster stands patiently waiting below, evidently with
a fore-knowledge of what is to come. Then, after a few seconds of the
quacking and braying, the mother bird suddenly ducks her head, with the
mandibles of her beak wide agape, between which the fledgling thrusts
its head, almost out of sight, and so keeps it for more than a minute.
Finally, withdrawing it, up again goes the head of the mother, with neck
craned out, and oscillating from side to side in a second spell of
speech-making. These curious actions are repeated several times, the
entire performance lasting for a period of nearly a quarter of an hour.
When it ends, possibly from the food supply having become exhausted, the
mother bird leaves the little glutton to itself and scuttles off seaward
to replenish her throat larder with a fresh stock of molluscs.

Although during their long four years' cruise Edward Gancy and Henry
Chester have seen many a strange sight, they think the one now before
their eyes as strange as any, and unique