I looked through the glass, and after searching over a vast expanse of sea and sky—it is no small trick to hold {146} a glass steady on a vessel that is heaving as the Clearchus was, but I had got the hang of letting my feet move with the ship and keeping my body steady—after a long search, I say, I found my white speck, and saw that it was some sort of a great white bird, sitting high in the water, like a gull. It may have been sleeping, but it was not when I caught sight of it through the glass. Its head was up, and it was looking about alertly, and at last it caught sight of the ship. The ship was not near to it, however, and it continued to stare right at me for a long time, until I grew embarrassed, and put the glass down. It sounds absurd enough, but you just try looking at a distant boat or a duck or a gull, through a glass, and if you do not have the same impulse I will eat it—if it is the right kind of a duck. When the glass was down, my embarrassment vanished, and I put it to my eyes again. The bird was still watching me, looking away now and then, and getting more nervous; but it waited until I had a distinct view of its shape and plumage, its bill, with a hook at the end, and its staring eyes, before taking flight. Then, with a last glance toward the ship, it spread long, narrow wings, held them out, seemed to rise on its feet, and began a sort of run over the surface of the water. When it had run a hundred feet or more in this way, and was going at great speed, it managed to take the air. Albatrosses do not take the air easily, and the men said that they are not able to rise from calm water, but depend on the lift of the waves. As it rose it seemed enormous, and I was reminded of the first great blue herons I ever saw. I was on a visit to my grandmother, in Newburyport, and as we were going over Chain Bridge we saw four of the great birds standing in the edge of the marsh. They saw us too; and when we stopped to get a better view, they rose. I remember they seemed as big as houses, as they flew off across the river, trailing their long legs. That albatross, seen through my glass, seemed as big as {147} a house. Probably he had a spread of wing half as large again as that of a great blue heron. As I stood, with the glass at my eyes, watching the albatross rise and sail away, the surface of the sea for a great distance was in the field of the glass. My attention was caught by a commotion—a sort of heaving of the surface—on the side of one of the rollers, three or four miles away. At almost the same instant a glistening black body shot out, rode high in the water for a moment, and then sank without a splash until only two small islands were visible. I yelled at the top of my lungs, and as if my yell had been a signal, a vigorous spout arose from the whale’s spiracle, plumed off to leeward, and the melodious cry of the Admiral came down to me.