THE CARRIER PIGEON 



south, and the ship seemed to be straining herself on 

 account of the heavy pull on her bows, and the resulting 

 lack of buoyancy. The weather moderated somewhat in 

 the afternoon, and we signalled the Koonya to " in- 

 crease speed." By midnight the improvement in the 

 weather was much more marked. The following morn- 

 ing, January 4, we set loose the carrier pigeon which one 

 of the New Zealand sailors had brought with him. We 

 attached a message to the bird, briefly describing our 

 passage so far, and hoped it would safely accomplish the 

 three hundred odd miles to the land. On releasing 

 our messenger it made one or two wide circles round the 

 ship, and then set off in a bee-line towards its home. We 

 wondered at the time whether any of the albatrosses, 

 which were now fairly numerous about our stern, espe- 

 cially at meal times, would attack the stranger, and we 

 heard afterwards that the pigeon had not reached its home. 



The hope that we were going to keep finer weather 

 was dispelled in the afternoon, for the wind began to in- 

 crease and the rising sea to break on board again, and 

 within a couple of hours we were bearing the full brunt 

 of another furious gale. The sea-going qualities of the 

 Nimrod were severely taxed, but the little vessel rose to 

 the occasion. As the gale increased in vehemence, she 

 seemed to throw off the lethargy, one might almost say 

 the sulkiness, which possessed her when she found herself 

 outward bound at the end of a tow-line, for the first time 

 in her strenuous life of forty years. Now that the tow- 

 line, in the fury of the gale, was but of little use, save to 

 steady us. the Nimrod began to play her own hand. It 

 was wonderful to see how she rose to the largest oncoming 

 waves. She was flung to and fro, a tiny speck in 

 this waste of waters, now poised on the summit of a 

 huge sea, whence we got almost a bird's-eye view of the 

 gallant Koonya smashing into the turmoil ahead; now 



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