His CAPTORS. 59 



Albatrosses. Blubber-birds. Sharks. 



The magnificent, swan-like albatrosses were 

 round us by hundreds, eagerly seizing and fight- 

 ing for every bit and fragment that fell off into 

 the water, swallowing it with the most carniv- 

 orous avidity, and a low, avaricious greed of de- 

 light, that detracted considerably from one's ad- 

 miration of this most superb of birds, just as 

 your veneration for one whom the coloring of a 

 youthful imagination has made a little more 

 than human, is not a little abated by finding 

 him subject to the necessities and passions of 

 poor human nature. Gonies, stinkards, horse- 

 birds, haglets, gulls, pigeons, and petrels, had 

 all many a good morsel of blubber. For at any 

 time in these seas, though eight hundred or a 

 thousand miles from shore, the capture of a 

 whale will allure thousands of sea-birds from 

 far and near. Sharks, too, appeared to claim 

 their share ; but it was not until after a man 

 had been down twice on the wave- washed car- 

 cass, to get a rope fast to a hole in the whale's 

 head, or I should have trembled for his legs. 



Before the blubber was all off, the huge en- 

 trails of the whale burst out like barrels, at the 

 wounds made by the spades and lances. I 

 hoped the peeled carcass would float for the 



