40 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
the albatross, at any rate, fly round and round the world 
over these stormy seas before the westerly winds, landing 
but once a year on such islands as Kerguelen, St. Paul, the 
Auckland Islands and others to breed. If so, the rest that 
they can obtain upon the big breaking rollers which pre- _ 
vail in these latitudes must be unsatisfactory judged by the 
standard of more civilized birds. I have watched sea birds 
elsewhere of which the same individuals appeared to follow 
the ship day after day for many thousands of miles, but on 
this voyage I came to the conclusion that a different set of — 
birds appeared each morning, and that they were hungry 
when they arrived. Certainly they flew astern and nearer 
to the ship in the morning, feeding on the scraps thrown 
overboard. As the day went on and the birds’ hunger was 
satisfied, they scattered, and such of them as continued to 
fly astern of the ship were a long way off. Hence we caught 
the birds in the early morning, and only one bird was 
caught after mid-day. 
The wind continued favourable and was soon blowing 
quite hard. On Friday, October 7, we were doing 7:8 
knots under sail alone, which was very good for the old 
Terra Push, as she was familiarly called: and we were then 
just 1000 miles from Melbourne. By Saturday night we 
were standing by topgallant halyards. Campbell took over 
the watch at 4 a.M. on Sunday morning. It was blowing 
hard and squally, but the ship still carried topgallants. 
There was a big following sea. 
At 6.30 A.M. there occurred one of those incidents of 
sea life which are interesting though not important. Quite — 
suddenly the first really big squall we had experienced on 
the voyage struck us. Topgallant halyards were let go, 
and the fore topgallant yard came down, but the main top- 
gallant yard jammed when only half down. It transpired 
afterwards that a gasket which had been blown over the 
yard had fouled the block of the sheet of the main upper 
topsail. The topgallant yard was all tilted to starboard and 
swaying from side to side, the sail seemed as though it 
might blow out at any moment, and was making a noise 
like big guns, and the mast was shaking badly. 
