2 1 2 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



it for half an hour, circling around and keeping 

 pace with the ship without making a stroke with his 

 wings. He disproved every theory I had read. 

 The nearest I could come to a theory was by notic- 

 ing that when he turned away from the wind he lay 

 on one side, one wing nearly perpendicular below 

 and the other on a line with it above, and both flat 

 against the wind. He would be driven leeward 

 with the full speed of the wind, and then turn upon 

 a level keel and shoot on a down incline faster than 

 the wind. When he faced it again, his wings, thin 

 and sharp, cut it like blades, and he would hold his 

 course as long as he made progress against it. I 

 noticed him very close to me when his momentum 

 was nearly exhausted. There was a quiver or 

 tremor of his wings, then he would throw himself 

 flatly against the wind again and fall off. Now, 

 while this explains acquisition and economy of 

 energy, and shows that he could sustain himself 

 with the minimum of muscular exertion, it does not 

 solve the problem, which appears to me inexplic- 

 able. 



On the 3d the sun set at 8:28, and the afterglow 

 continued for something over two hours. The sea 

 became very smooth, the sun found room among 

 the clouds. There was a fine sunset and the sea 

 was highly phosphorescent — that pale, luminous, 

 ghostly glow which Coleridge so weirdly described 

 in his Ancient Mariner. On the evening of the 

 4th there was a line of clear sky along the western 



