OFF CHATHAM BARS 
199 
pointed wings. The wailing that was going on made me 
think of the slaughter of a battle, only that I knew the wails 
were not of anguish but of satisfaction, eagerness, jealousy. 
The jaeger’s wail was in a high-pitched key, somewhat stri¬ 
dent ; that of the shearwater was mellower and lower in the 
scale. 
As for me, I was just in my element, fairly wild with de¬ 
light, feeling like an admiral on his quarter-deck when victory 
is surely his own. As fast as I could, I loaded the reflex 
camera, selected a single bird nearest me, in flight or in the 
act of alighting, or else some pretty combination of birds, and 
fired away. It was a perfect fusillade, yet each exposure was 
made with thought and care, though each followed the other 
with considerable rapidity. Meanwhile my friends had pluckily 
aroused themselves to see the great sight, and I pointed out 
to them the different sorts of birds — six kinds in all, there 
were. The doctor had with him a small camera, and he took 
a few snap-shots. 
For over an hour my battery was in constant action. Then 
the plates were used up, so I darkened the cuddy, and crawled 
into it to change plates. This took some time, and when I 
emerged a big cloudbank was making up from the west. Just 
as it began to cover the sun, something went wrong with the 
focal-plane shutter, — a chip got into it, I found out that 
evening, — and it would not work. It was time, anyhow, to 
stop and get in before the tide turned, so I quit work. It was 
singular that all day I saw but two Wilson’s Petrels. Yet it 
was far more of an achievement to have photographed the 
jaegers, which I have never found as tame as, for some 
reason, they were this day. Unfortunately a good manv of 
the pictures proved worthless on account of the ground-glass 
having been reset a trifle out of register. A few good ones, 
however, repaid me for the trip. 
