IV.
I was so confounded by the shock and the blow that for some moments I sat goggling the object that lay as lead upon my knees like a fool. I then threw it from me, and stood up. It fell where a slant of moonshine lay clear upon the side of the top, and I perceived that it was a big sea-bird, as large as a noddy, white as snow saving the margin of its wings, which were of a velvet black. It had a long, curved beak, and I gathered from the look of one of its pinions, which overlaid the body as though broken, that its width of wing must have come proportionally very near to that of the albatross. I could see by the moonshine that the eyes were closing by the slow drawing down of a white skin. The creature did not stir. I stood staring at it full five minutes, gripping the topmast rigging to provide against its rolling me out of the top should it rise suddenly and strike out with its wings, but there was no stir of life in it. It was then that I caught sight of something which seemed to glitter in the thick down upon its breast like a dewdrop on thistledown. It was a little square case of white metal, apparently a tobacco-box, secured to the bird’s neck. By this time the passengers had come up from supper, and were dancing again on the poop. I could see nothing for the awning, but the music was audible enough, and I could also catch the sliding sounds of feet travelling over the hard planks, and the gay laughter of hearts warmed by several toasts. The Jacks were also at work forward. An occasional note of tipsy merriment, I would think, rose up from that part of the ship; but there was no lack of earnestness in the toe and heeling there; the slap of the sailors’ feet upon the decks sounded like the clapping of hands; and I could just catch a glimpse of the figure of the fiddler in the obscurity which overlaid the booms quivering and swaying as he sawed, as though the noise he made was driving him crazy.
I seized the big bird by the legs and found its weight by no means so considerable as I should have supposed from the blow it dealt me. So, tightly binding its webbed feet with my pocket-handkerchief, that they might serve me as a handle, I dropped with this strange, dead sea-messenger through the wide square of the lubber’s hole into the main shrouds, and leisurely descended. The chief mate stood at the head of the starboard poop ladder as I reached the rail.
“Hillo!” he called out, “good sport there, Mr. Catesby. What star have you been shooting over pray? And what is it may I ask? A turkey?”
A shout of this sort was enough to bring everybody running to look. The music ceased, the dancing abruptly stopped. In a moment I was surrounded by a crowd of ladies and gentlemen shoving and exclaiming as they gathered about the skylight upon which I had laid the big sea-fowl.
“What is it, Mr. Catesby? My stars! a handsome bird surely,” exclaimed Captain Bow.
“Oh, Captain,” cried a young lady, “is the beautiful creature dead really?”
“See!” shouted a military man, “the creature’s breast is decorated with a crucifix. No, damme, it’s a trick of the light. What is it, though?”
“A silver pouncebox, I declare,” exclaimed a tall, stout lady, with a knowing nod of the feather in her head.
“A sailor’s nickel tobacco-box more like, ma’am,” observed the mate, “with some castaway’s writing inside, or that bird’s a crocodile.”