336 



The Albatross 



been scarcely a bird visible anywhere, even from the 

 crow's-nest. But by the time the whale was dead 

 the number of Albatrosses around the ship was count- 

 less. They drifted towards us out of the vast void 

 and settled upon the water until oftentimes we seemed 

 to be the centre of a great snow-field. And there 

 those feathered hosts awaited patiently, silently, the 

 preparation of their banquet. Yet in this prompti- 

 tude of arrival they were far behind the sharks, who 

 appeared upon the scene from the solitude of ocean 

 directly the flow of blood had tainted the water, 

 and, as soon as the whale was dead, began to tear at 

 the limp body of the huge mammal. 



But when once we began to cut at the carcase the 

 eagerness of the birds could no longer be restrained. 

 With hoarse shrieks they crowded over one another, 

 even under the blows of the sharp spades, and I have 

 several times seen a man, who with a bowline round 

 him has been lowered down upon the whale in order 

 to insert a blubber hook into its throat, overwhelmed 

 by a rush of Albatrosses borne by an incoming sea 

 right upon him, and he has had to grab armfuls of 

 the ravenous birds and hurl them away from him 

 before he could accomplish his task. But unless by 

 an accident, such as the piercing of the case and the 

 consequent leakage of the spermaceti, which floated 

 astern like cakes of wax, the hungry hordes never 

 got more than an occasional scrap or so until we had 

 done with the body. 



The Albatross is never seen alive north of the 

 Equator. Up to a certain latitude he can venture, 

 but he is essentially a cold-water bird, and no sooner 

 does he find the temperature rise above a moderate 

 degree of warmth than he retires south again into 

 his well-beloved regions of cold and storm. The 



