e, they float month after
month until the mating instinct begins to stir in them, and then in
couples they float down the seas to the pole. There is nothing so
wonderful as the flight of a bird; and it seemed to me that I never
could weary of watching it. But I did weary of the albatross, and one
night, after praying that I might never see one again, I was awakened
by the pitching of the vessel, by the rattling of ropes, and the
clashing of the blocks against swaying spars. I had been awakened
before by storms at sea. You remember, Evelyn, when I returned to
Dulwich--I had been nearly wrecked off the coast of Marseilles?"
Evelyn nodded. "But the sensation was not like anything I had ever
experienced at sea before, and interested and alarmed I climbed,
catching a rope, steadying myself, reaching the poop somehow."

"'We're in the trades, Sir Owen!' the man at the helm shouted to me.
'We're making twelve or fourteen knots an hour; a splendid wind!'

"The sails were set and the vessel leaned to starboard, and then the
rattle of ropes began again and the crashing of the blocks as she
leaned over to port. Such surges, you have no idea, Evelyn,
threatening the brig, but slipping under the keel, lifting her to the
crest of the wave. Caught by the wind for a moment she seemed to be
driven into the depths, her starboard grazing the sea or very nearly.
The spectacle was terrific; the lone stars and the great cloud of
canvas, the whole seeming such a little thing beneath it, and no one
on deck but the helmsman bound to the helm, and well for him--a slip
would have cost him his life, he would have been carried into the
sea. An excellent sailor, yet even he was alarmed at the canvas we
carried, so he confided to me; but my skipper knew his business, a
first-rate man that skipper, the best sailor I have ever met. There
are few like him left, for the art of sailing is nearly a lost art,
and the difficulty of getting men who can handle square sails is
extraordinary. But this one, the last of an old line, came up, crying
out quite cheerfully, "Sir Owen, we're in luck indeed to have caught
the trades so soon."

"Day after day, night after night, we flew like a seagull. 'Record
sailing,' my skipper often cried to me, telling me the number of
knots we had made in the last four-and-twenty hours."

"And the albatrosses, I hope you didn't catch one?"

"One day the skipper suggested that we should, the breast feathers
being very beautifu