The wind was favourable, the weather was lovely. Cheerfulness and good-humour pervaded the ship from stem to stern. The courteous captain did the honours of the cabin-table with the air of a gentleman who was receiving friends in his own house. The handsome doctor promenaded the deck arm-in-arm with ladies in course of rapid recovery from the first gastric consequences of travelling by sea. The excellent chief engineer, musical in his leisure moments to his fingers’ ends, played the fiddle in his cabin, accompanied on the flute by that young Apollo of the Atlantic trade, the steward’s mate. Only on the third morning of the voyage was the harmony on board the _Aquila_ disturbed by a passing moment of discord--due to an unexpected addition to the ranks of the passengers, in the shape of a lost bird! It was merely a weary little land-bird (blown out of its course, as the learned in such matters supposed); and it perched on one of the yards to rest and recover itself after its long flight. The instant the creature was discovered, the insatiable Anglo-Saxon delight in killing birds, from the majestic eagle to the contemptible sparrow, displayed itself in its full frenzy. The crew ran about the decks, the passengers rushed into their cabins, eager to seize the first gun and to have the first shot. An old quarter-master of the _Aquila_ was the enviable man, who first found the means of destruction ready to his hand. He lifted the gun to his shoulder, he had his finger on the trigger, when he was suddenly pounced upon by one of the passengers--a young, slim, sunburnt, active man--who snatched away the gun, discharged it over the side of the vessel, and turned furiously on the quarter-master. “You wretch! would you kill the poor weary bird that trusts our hospitality, and only asks us to give it a rest? That little harmless thing is as much one of God’s creatures as you are. I’m ashamed of you--I’m horrified at you--you’ve got bird-murder in your face; I hate the sight of you!” The quarter-master--a large grave fat man, slow alike in his bodily and his mental movements--listened to this extraordinary remonstrance with a fixed stare of amazement, and an open mouth from which the unspat tobacco-juice tricked in little brown streams. When the impetuous young gentleman paused (not for want of words, merely for want of breath), the quarter-master turned about, and addressed himself to the audience gathered round. “Gentlemen,” he said, with a Roman brevity, “this young fellow is mad.” The captain’s voice checked the general outbreak of laughter. “That will do, quarter-master. Let it be understood that nobody is to shoot the bird--and let me suggest to _you,_ sir, that you might have expressed your sentiments quite as effectually in less violent language.”