“Bad luck for us!” ejaculated Cap’n Pem decisively. “Never knowed it to fail!”
“Mebbe nothin’ more’n bad weather,” commented Mr. Kemp optimistically.
Captain Edwards shook his head and said nothing, while, on deck, the crew conversed in hushed but earnest tones and glanced apprehensively at the resting bird. Then, as the boys resumed their interrupted observations and the eight strokes of the bell pealed out, the bird lifted its white wings, soared from its perch and was soon out of sight.
“Wusser an’ wusser!” prophesied Cap’n Pem lugubriously. “Bet ye we don’t get no ’ile or a man goes overboard or suthin’ serious happens. Lef’ at eight bells too—that’s the time it’s goin’ ter happen! Reckon I oughn’t a cotched them chicks yisterday!”
“Oh, come, Cap’n Pem!” laughed Tom. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
The old whaleman looked at him a moment frowning.
“’Course I does!” he snorted. “Ask Mike or any o’ the crew!” Still muttering he stumped off. In a few hours, however, the incident seemed to have been forgotten and no one mentioned it again.
A few days later, the boys saw a school of huge black and white creatures with enormous fins upon their backs which they thought were some sort of whale.
“Killers,” said Mr. Kemp, when the boys pointed them out. “Kind of a po’poise, or grampus or whale, I dunno which, and jes’ about the all-firedest savage critters there is. I’ve seed ’em tackle a bull whale an’ tear him all to bits right afore my eyes. That’s why we call ’em killers,—’cause they kill an’ eat whales.”
But despite a sharp lookout that was maintained, no whales were sighted and the bark kept steadily on her course. Then, one day, the boys saw an enormous white bird sailing towards them close to the surface of the sea. It was the first albatross, and with fascinated eyes the boys watched it, as with motionless wings, fully ten feet from tip to tip, the beautiful creature sailed along in the bark’s wake, skimming the crests of the waves, swinging to right and left, dipping down to pick up some bit of offal thrown overboard; now rising until it was a mere speck in the sky, anon speeding ahead of the rushing ship as easily as though she were standing still and then dropping astern again to take up its wonted place. Every morning the bird was there. Long after darkness fell, the boys could see its ghostly white form against the heaving, black sea, and they wondered if it slept on the wing or ever slept at all. Then another appeared, and another and another, until a score or more of the wonderful creatures were constantly in sight. And then, at last, a dim, hazy-blue shape loomed like a cloud upon the horizon above the heaving sea and the boys looked upon the strange, unfrequented islands of Tristan da Cunha.