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WE GAIN A SAILING-BOAT 186
foresaw that to put it together and launch it would be a Herculean task, so I left it for the time, and collected various utensils, a copper boiler, some plates of iron, tobacco-graters, two grinding-stones, a small barrel of gunpowder, and another full of flints, which I much valued. Jack's barrow was not forgotten ; two more were afterwards found and added. All these articles were hurried into the boat, and we re-embarked with speed, to avoid the land-wind that rises in the evening. As we were drawing near to the shore we saw a row of small figures ranged on the strand. They were dressed in black, and all uniform, with white waistcoats and full cravats, and looked like a regiment of pigmy soldiers.
Jack suggested they were Lilliputians, such as he had read of in ' Gulliver's Travels.'
But as we drew nearer, Fritz cried out that they had beaks, and that their arms were small wings; and in an instant it dawned on us that what we had mistaken for little soldiers were penguins.
While we were talking I steered gently towards shore, and the very moment we got into shallow water Jack leaped in up to his waist, and was quickly on land, hitting right and left with his stick among the penguins, so that half a dozen of |
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