The most constant in its companionship with us, in every latitude and in all states of the weather, is the little petrel—Thelassadroma Pelagica—a small swallow-tailed bird, about the size, with much of the appearance, of the common house martin. Wilson in his ornithology gives a graphic description of these birds as seen in a gale, “coursing over the waves, down the declivities and up the ascents of the foaming surge, that threatens to bury them, as it bursts over their heads; sweeping again through the hollow trough of the sea, as in a sheltered valley, and again mounting with the rising billow, skimming just above its surface, occasionally dipping their feet in the water and throwing it up with additional force: sometimes leaping, with their legs parallel on the surface of the roughest wave, for yards in succession; meanwhile continually coursing from side to side of the ship’s wake, making excursions far and wide to the right and to the left—now a great way ahead, now shooting far astern and returning again as if the vessel was stationary, though often running at the rate of ten knots the hour.”
The most singular faculty of these birds, however, is that of standing, and of running on the face of the water, with the greatest apparent facility. When any greasy matter is thrown overboard they instantly collect around it with greedy and clamorous chatterings; and, facing to the windward, with their long wings expanded and their little webbed feet pattering the water, eagerly seize the booty. It is the lightness of their bodies and the force of the wind against their wings that enable them so readily to do this. In calm weather they perform the same manœuvre, by keeping their wings just so much in action as to prevent their feet from sinking below the surface. According to Buffon, it is this habit which has given to the whole genus the name they bear, from the walking on the water of the Apostle Peter. It is amusing, and partly vexatious, to see a clumsy albatross or great booby come swooping down among them, while they are thus collected around their food, and, flapping them away with its monstrous wings, at one mouthful rob them of a whole meal. Greasy substances are their choicest food, and their little bodies become a mass of oil: so much so, that dried and strung on a skewer, they are burned on some of the islands of the Atlantic as a substitute for candles.
The boisterousness of the weather has made the frequent reduction of sail necessary—at times, almost to bare poles. This has afforded a more than ordinary opportunity of witnessing the exposure and daring intrepidity required from the sailor in the discharge of his duty. The taking in of sail and the reefing of topsails in so large a ship, by a crew of four hundred men, emulous of excelling in skill and expertness, is an exciting scene even in a moderate breeze. When this occurs amidst the rushing winds and howling storm, with such masses of heavy canvas as compose our sails, flapping seemingly in unmanageable force, and snapping like thunder in the gale, it is frightful to look aloft. While the masts are bending to the wind and the ship careening in the water, you see the yards covered with hundreds of the crew with no guard from destruction in the giddy height, but the habit of keeping their feet firmly on the foot-ropes, while their hands and arms are occupied in overcoming the fearful thrashings of the sails, and in gathering in the canvas and binding it down with the reef-points. Some of them on the upper spars, like birds in the topmost branches of a tree, sweep to and fro over the roaring gulf below; and, occasionally a man or boy is beheld clinging to a slender spar or single sheet at the very mast-head, two hundred feet from the deck, disentangling a halliard or conductor—causing one’s nerves to shake under the apprehension of seeing him hurled, in some pitch or roll of the frigate, far overboard into the raging sea, or dashed to death at your feet on deck.
October 16th.—The mountains and islets around the harbor of Rio are in full view, and I will close this section of my record. In doing this, I must follow the subject matter of my last date—the birds of the sea—by a word on some of its fishes. In a calm yesterday we were surrounded by a great number of dolphin—Cyrophæna hippuris—certainly, as seen moving in its blue waters, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the deep. When full grown, it is from two to three feet in length, elegant and symmetrical in shape, and brilliant in colors: the prevailing hue being mazarine blue, or Pompadour, shading from the back to the under parts into emerald and gold, with fins and tail of green running rapidly into a bright yellow. Its motions are easy and graceful, and were watched, in great numbers, under the advantages of a smooth sea and brilliant sun. Dolphin are so common in all tropical latitudes, and so frequently seen, that I might not have thought of taking note of them in this instance, but for an assertion respecting them recently met in a book on natural history, which, emanating from a fellow of Oxford, ought to be of good authority. After stating the fact that the shape of this fish, as given in heraldic and classic representations, is entirely poetical and untrue, the author—Wood—adds: “indeed almost the whole history of the dolphin is imaginary—very poetical, but very untrue. The red and blue of the heraldic lion are not less fabulous than the changing colors of the dying dolphin, so dear to poetry. Alas! our unpoetical dolphin, when we have harpooned him and brought him to the deck is only black and white, and all the change that he makes is that the black becomes brown in time, and the white gray.” This assertion I know, from personal observation in company with many witnesses, to be an error. In the first voyage I ever made, I had an opportunity of observing and admiring the varying and beautiful colors of the dolphin while dying; and now, fully proved to myself the truthfulness of the record of it then made. Mr. G——, secretary to our commander-in-chief, caught one with a hook and line, and quickly drew him over the stern on deck. I happened to be present, and, though the dying throes even of a soulless fish can scarcely be looked on without sympathy, the effect on its coloring could not be watched without admiration. The first change which took place, after the fish reached the deck, was of the whole surface into a bright yellow or gold, spotted, like the speckled trout, with deep blue; then the whole became blue again, the spots of a deeper hue still remaining distinctly marked; a third change was into a pure and spotless silver, over which prismatic colors, like those in an opal under a shifting light, passed rapidly and tremulously for a few moments, when the beautiful dolphin became brown and gray like any other dead fish.
It is possible that, when struck with a harpoon, the violence of the shock may be such as to produce death so suddenly that these changes have passed away, before the fish can be drawn on board, as their duration is but momentary. Either this is the truth, or Mr. Wood is not authority in the case. You may still believe therefore that
“The dolphin, ’mid expiring throes,
More exquisite in beauty grows,
As fades the strength of life:
And tintings bright of sapphire blue,
And rainbow lights of every hue