THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD 



up and down in evident consternation, walked away, 

 came back, and with an eye on me plainly sought 

 to pacify her fledgling. Suddenly she put her bill 

 far down into the wide-open bill, effectually stifling 

 the cries. Then the two boobies stood locked in 

 amazing convulsions. The throat of the mother 

 swelled, and a lump passed into and down the throat 

 of the young bird. The puzzle of the flying boobies 

 was solved in the startling realization that the 

 mother had returned from the sea with a fish in 

 her stomach and had disgorged it into the gullet 

 of her offspring. 



I watched this feat performed dozens of times, 

 and at length scared a mother booby into with- 

 drawing her bill and dropping a fish on the sand. 

 It was a flying-fish fully ten inches long. I inter- 

 rupted several little dinner-parties, and in each case 

 found the disgorged fish to be of the flying species. 

 The boobies flew ten, twenty miles out to the open 

 sea for fish, while the innumerable shoals that lay 

 around their island were alive with sardine and 

 herring! 



I had raised a tremendous row; so, leaving the 

 boobies to quiet down, I made my way toward the 

 flocks of rabihorcados. Here and there in the thick 

 growth of green weed were boobies squatting on 

 isolated nests. No sooner had I gotten close to the 

 rabihorcados than I made sure they were the far- 

 famed frigate pelicans, or man-of-war birds. They 

 were as tame as the boobies; as I walked among 

 them many did not fly at all. Others rose with 

 soft, swishing sound of great wings and floated in a 

 circle, uttering deep-throated cries, not unlike the 



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