THE FRIGATE BIRD. 103 
traversing the Atlantic, arrives in mighty billows, swollen to enor- 
mous heights, with a terrific clash and shock, the tranquil petrels 
labour imperturbably. ‘I saw them,” says M. de Quatrefages, 
“describe in the air a thousand curves, plunge between two waves, 
reappear with a fish, Swiftest when they followed the wind, slowest 
when they confronted it, they nevertheless poised always with the 
same ease, and never appeared to give a stroke of the wing the more 
than in the calmest weather. And yet the billows mounted up the 
slopes, like cataracts reversed, as high as the platform of Notre Dame, 
and their spray higher than Montmartre. They did not appear more 
moved by it.” 
Man has not their philosophy. The seaman is powerfully affected 
when, at the decline of day, a sudden night darkening over the sea, he 
descries, hovering about his barque, an ominous little pigeon, a bird 
of funereal black. Black is not the fitting word ; black would be 
less gloomy : the true tint is that of a smoky-brown, which cannot 
be defined. It is a shadow of hell, an evil vision, which strides along 
the waters, breasts the billows, crushes under its feet the tempest. The 
stormy petrel (or ‘St. Peter”) is the horror of the seaman, who sees in 
