The ladies were invariably the first to retire, though they probably continued prattling until long after we were in bed and asleep; a habit which, as Dundreary said, “No fellow could understand.” Precept and example have been tried in vain: for as it was in the beginning, &c., &c. After we had been at sea for some time without seeing a living thing other than fish, the air suddenly became alive with Cape pigeons and albatrosses; and I managed to capture one of the latter on a stout hook baited with a piece of pork. After a little hesitation, he pounced upon the prize, and, raising his beak, swallowed it at a gulp. I was fully prepared for his taking flight, and, indeed, had he got my line foul of the rigging, I should soon have been in difficulties. But, discarding such a course, he planted his webbed feet firmly before him, offering thereby such resistance to the water that it was no easy matter to get him alongside. At last, after I had received timely assistance from a passing sailor, the bird stood on deck, and was at once violently sick, vomiting great quantities of a clear, oily liquid. I have since learnt that all sea-birds are sick on board ship, and quite unable to use their wings. According to my invariable practice of despatching my victims as quickly as possible, I killed this one immediately—one might almost add painlessly—with a small dose of prussic acid. He turned out to be a very plump bird, measuring fifteen feet from tip to tip of his outspread wings. By an unfortunate misunderstanding on the part of one of the sailors, my capture was thrown overboard before I had set up the skeleton; the only use that was made of it being the employment of a few of the feathers to show the direction of the wind, or, as one of our passengers with a poetical turn of mind put it: “Oh! bid them beware of ships that go from London to the Indies, Else they’ll be caught, and their feathers plucked to show which way the wind is.” By far the most graceful of the many other species of sea-birds that were continually hovering about the ship were the stormy petrel, or, as the superstitious sailors call them, “Mother Carey’s Chickens.” Their wonderfully rapid flight, now in the hollow between two waves, anon on the foaming crest of another, really looks more like walking on the water; and I understand that petrel is only a corruption of Peter. Among the sailors they have a bad reputation, and are regarded as birds of ill omen, a superstition which, on the principle of “give a dog a bad name,” &c., has clung to them, but which is in reality quite undeserved. Ignorance and tradition have, in fact, placed the cart before the horse: the stormy petrel follows storms, but cannot possibly foretell them.