He was answered by a plop, plop, plop from the open doorway. Joel peered out. During the storm the rocks of Popper Island had disappeared under a layer of white snow and ice, sparkling in the morning sun. On top of that ice lay three fish.
Before Joel’s eyes, Patch emerged from the surf, waddled over, and regurgitated a fish onto the ice. It was a terrific production, with lots of hacking and heaving and shrieking. The fish was slick with stomach fluids.
“Ew,” Joel said, even as Ernest and Mae hopped down from his arms, toddled over, and scarfed down the fish with orks of joy.
“That’s good,” Nina said, pulling her hat low over her ears as she joined Joel in the doorway. “I’m glad Ernest and Mae took care of that, because I don’t think I was up for eating barf fish.”
“Yes,” Joel replied. “I’m with you.”
Yuka slipped out of the hut and walked right past the penguin-puked fish, unimpressed. The spiky crampons on his boots crunched through the fresh ice as he headed to the boat. “Back to work! I’m hoping to be finished with the repair by the end of the day.”
“Thank you, Yuka!” Mrs. Popper called from within the hut.
Joel looked at Ernest, who had just finished gobbling down his second fish. Ernest looked up at Joel proudly, fluttering his fuzzy wings.
“Ernest and Mae haven’t made any penguin friends yet,” Nina said.
“I’m worried about them, too,” Joel said. “There’s only a few hours left, and we don’t know if they’ll be okay after we leave.”
A NEW DESTINATION
JOEL AND NINA and Mrs. Popper lined up on the shoreline, looking at the rocking boat. Beaten metal covered the hole the Popper Island shoals had made in the hull. Yuka had neatly welded it on with strips of light gray solder. “Looks pretty good, right?” Yuka said, rapping his knuckles on the hull. It rang out brightly.
“It does. Great work!” Mrs. Popper said.
Joel tried to add his voice, but the pit in his stomach was making it hard even to speak. Ernest was tight in his arms, snoring away.
How was Joel going to say what he needed to say?
Nina looked up at him. Normally she was the more assertive one, but apparently it was his turn this time around.
“Are you two okay?” Mrs. Popper asked.
“Yeah,” Joel said, nodding. Then he shook his head. “No. I mean, no.”
“Yes, right, no,” Nina said, nodding her head energetically and then shaking it just as energetically.
“You’re both acting very peculiar.”
“No kidding,” Yuka said, narrowing his eyes. “I know none of us slept too well the last few nights, but you’re being really weird.”
“Okay, here goes,” Joel said, taking his mom’s hand and looking into her eyes so she would know to listen hard to him. “One of the penguins took us to the other side of the island, and there are puffins there, which should be great, but they’re not healthy, not at all, they’re all scrawny and their eggs are broken but there aren’t any chicks, and the penguins are all fat and healthy, and we think that the problem is the penguins are eating all the fish around here and there’s none left for the puffins, and they were here first, so that doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Mrs. Popper stared at him, her mouth wide open. Then she finally put together his stream of words. She nodded. “So what do you want us to do?”
Nina coughed and stepped forward, maybe a little dramatically. “It might have been a good idea in the olden days for Mr. Popper to bring his penguins up here, but he didn’t realize that it would make it hard for the puffins to survive, even all these generations later. What if… what if we brought them to where they belong?”
“You mean, to the Antarctic?” Mrs. Popper said, hand over her chest.
“That’s, um, very far from here,” Yuka added.
“Yes,” Nina said, tears entering her voice. “But then the penguins would all be in their proper home, with other penguins. And during the voyage Mae and Ernest would have more of a chance to bond with the rest of the group and find penguins to be their parents.”
Mrs. Popper looked at Yuka. His face was completely still. Then, finally, he gave a little shrug. “If you all help me pilot, I could write my paper and send it to my professor along the way.”
“And we have the winter break not so far off,” Nina said quickly. “We’d only miss a couple extra weeks of school. In the meantime, we can work ahead in our textbooks.”
“It would be so educational for us to go to Antarctica, don’t you think?” Joel said.
“Yes, Mom, it’s an opportunity not to be missed,” Nina said, nodding eagerly.
Mrs. Popper looked at her children, then at the dozing Mae and Ernest, tight in their arms. “I suppose we could see if it’s possible.”
Nina jumped up and down, then remembered Mae and stopped. The penguin chick didn’t wake, though—she must not have slept in the ruckus last night, either. She gave a soft, fish-scented burp while she slept.
“But, kids,” Mrs. Popper said, “just how do you propose we get two dozen wild penguins to board a boat?”
Joel paused. They’d been so busy worrying about how to convince Mom that they hadn’t considered this problem.
Yuka coughed. “The ancestors of these penguins arrived here on a boat, so maybe it won’t be so very unfamiliar to them.”
“You mean the penguins might have been passing down stories about their trip here?” Mrs. Popper asked, eyebrows raised.
“Stranger things have happened,” Yuka said, shrugging.
Nina tugged on her mom’s sleeve. “Mom, Mom! If that’s true, maybe they’ve been passing down other stories about the original Popper Penguins. Remember, they used to have a circus act, where they marched in formation?”
Joel realized where his sister was going, and clapped. That woke Ernest up, who gave an outraged grunt and rolled over to
