FISHING FOR THE ALBATROSS

One day, as in Coleridge's poem, an albatross crossed our wake and followed, to pick food thrown over from the galley garbage. We had no crossbow aboard with which to shoot it, and even if we used our guns we couldn't bring the ship about and pick it up. So Long John and William baited a large shark-hook with a slab of pork fat and trolled a stout line far astern. Bits of troll bait were cast in the wake of the ship, as she climbed easily up one side of a sea and slid smoothly down the other.

The albatross picked up floating bits with scarcely a pause, as it eased down close to the water, snatching its food with. a flick of its powerful hooked bill and slapping the sea with a broad-webbed

foot. The quick recovery of its speed was marvelous; it would leave the reaching comber of a giant wave behind and sweep alongside the plunging Blossom. Men who had never seen an albatross in flight draped themselves over the lazy bench and across the dory strongback to watch the bird beat back and forth on the powerful spread of its 10-foot wings, which always seemed rigid in its gliding flight.

Some of the seamen were distinctly uneasy, swearing we would be trailed by disaster if we killed the bird that made the breeze blow fair. But William, unafraid of the albatross hoodoo, kept at his fishing and eventually had the satisfaction. of seeing the big bird take a great mouthful of bait and hook.

A quick jerk fastened the hook in the horn of the bill, and a clarion of triumph. awoke even the men asleep below. Soon

the fowl of the Ancient Mariner stood on deck, alive and entirely uninjured, though like its fellows caught during the next few days, it became quite seasick from the motion of the ship! Thus we obtained some of our rarest specimens, but many of the birds which we wanted for our collection would not take the hook, so we planned to pursue these in the whaleboat. In spite of winds and seas, the boat was made ready with well-filled water butt and sealed tins of hard-tack as emergency rations in case she should become separated from the ship; then we bided our time.

One raw, blizzardy day the rare little white-bellied storm petrel was sighted astern. All about it were cape pigeons, cape hens, the whaler's Nelly, or giant petrel, together with an occasional ghost petrel or an albatross.

Cuyler and his men grabbed their shotguns and leaped into the boat as it hung

from the davits; Long John took the tiller at the cry to lower away.

We had no time to brace the sails into the wind and stop the momentum of the ship; so we chanced it, with the powerful wind whoo-whooing in the rigging. Vanzetti and I paid out the line, and the whaleboat slapped the sea.

For a moment it looked as if the men would be poured into the foaming brine. The davit falls caught and the boat was towed along with the ship and slapped against her side. The painter was hauled taut and the falls were cleared as John yelled; in another instant the whaleboat was free, whirling far astern of the Blossom.

This and succeeding whaleboat cruises resulted in many interesting specimens being shot and brought aboard, but always these excursions occasioned apprehension, for the boat always got away with difficulty, was only occasionally visible when

balanced for a second on the crest of a distant wave, and returned after many anxious hours, when we wondered whether boat and ship would ever meet again. To men in an open boat 1,500 miles from land, it is no laughing matter to see one's ship disappearing, as if sunk into one of the foam-dappled valleys of the sea.

By this means nearly 50 albatrosses of four species were collected, including one of the large snowy variety; several spectacled ones or mollymawks, and more than a score of the yellow-nosed, with a blaze of chrome down the top of their dark bills.

One of the commoner wandering albatrosses, caught from the deck with hook and line, was banded, on the chance that some other ship might recapture it. In a bottle on its neck we placed a brief history of that famous bird mentioned by Dr. Frank M. Chapman, which was bottled December 8, 1847, by the whaler Euphrates in latitude 43° S., longitude 148° 40′ W., and recovered 12 days later,

3,400 miles away, by the famous whaler Cachelot, at 45° 50' S. and 78° 27′ W.

BIRDS TOO BIG FOR A LITTLE SHIP

The "stuffed" albatross specimens were so large that we faced a serious storage problem. The difficulty was solved by swinging on deck a huge whaling cask and packing the birds in it. John, with his cask tools and dried flag leaves, headed the cask and made it water-tight for storage in the damp hold of the ship. One of our crew, an ex-rumrunner, suggested we might finance another expedition by inserting several bottles of Scotch or a magnum of champagne into each albatross before sewing it up.

But Cuyler and I were less interested. in the present or future contents of the albatross skins than we had been in the meat which they once contained. Not only had we slain the albatross and skinned it into the bargain, but we had eaten it. In the absence of fresh meats aboard, we jumped at the chance to fry small cutlets from the breast of the Ancient Mar

the crest of the island, a semicircular sweep 2,700 feet above the sea, once the rim of a gigantic crater, which blew out toward the sea and left a beautiful valley, the Sandy Bay country, on the windward side of St. Helena (page 57).

It is impossible from the sea to distinguish the three classic summits of this ridge, but we were to find on climbing them that Diana's Peak is higher than either Cuckold or Actæon.

AN ISLAND WITH ITS OWN HISTORY

What an enchanting place to be situated so far out in the South Atlantic, as if forgotten-a Flying Dutchman of of an island, which many have seen from the decks of passing ships, but at which few ever touch! It is indeed a lovely emerald among the bewildering jewels of the British Crown, with a history all its own. Green, fertile, lovely, and capped by the peak of Diana the Huntress, it stands in splendid isolation, sur

BIG SHIPS

rounded by forbidding cliffs which rise a thousand feet above a fisherman's paradise.

It was a hundred years after the memorable first voyage of Columbus that Englishmen learned of the great wealth to be derived from the India trade; and here, on the island of St. Helena, in 1651, the English East India Company established its great way station. By charter from Charles II in 1661, the company assumed a control over the island which lasted for nearly two centuries. The island plantations were cultivated with

slave labor; and fresh vegetables and meat animals were provided for the ships which touched here on the voyages between England and India.

The monopoly of the Indian trade by the East India Company was abolished in 1813, with the result that there was a sudden growth of shipping and competition. The China tea clippers, queens of the oceans, began to touch at the island for supplies as they raced home from the typhoon seas.

For six years St. Helena was the home of the exiled Napoleon, who was brought