outweighed the wish to set them
free, and we gave them ether so that they did not suffer.

The Southern Ocean is the home of these and many species of birds, but
among them the albatross is pre-eminent. It has been mentioned that
Wilson believed that the albatross, at any rate, fly round and round the
world over these stormy seas before the westerly winds, landing but once
a year on such islands as Kerguelen, St. Paul, the Auckland Islands and
others to breed. If so, the rest that they can obtain upon the big
breaking rollers which prevail in these latitudes must be unsatisfactory
judged by the standard of more civilized birds. I have watched sea birds
elsewhere of which the same individuals appeared to follow the ship day
after day for many thousands of miles, but on this voyage I came to the
conclusion that a different set of birds appeared each morning, and that
they were hungry when they arrived. Certainly they flew astern and nearer
to the ship in the morning, feeding on the scraps thrown overboard. As
the day went on and the birds' hunger was satisfied, they scattered, and
such of them as continued to fly astern of the ship were a long way off.
Hence we caught the birds in the early morning, and only one bird was
caught after mid-day.

The wind continued favourable and was soon blowing quite hard. On Friday,
October 7, we were doing 7.8 knots under sail alone, which was very good
for the old Terra Push, as she was familiarly called: and we were then
just 1000 miles from Melbourne. By Saturday night we were standing by
topgallant halyards. Campbell took over the watch at 4 A.M. on Sunday
morning. It was blowing hard and squally, but the ship still carried
topgallants. There was a big following sea.

At 6.30 A.M. there occurred one of those incidents of sea life which are
interesting though not important. Quite suddenly the first really big
squall we had experienced on the voyage struck us. Topgallant halyards
were let go, and the fore topgallant yard came down, but the main
topgallant yard jammed when only half down. It transpired afterwards that
a gasket which had been blown over the yard had fouled the block of the
sheet of the main upper topsail. The topgallant yard was all tilted to
starboard and swaying from side to side, the sail seemed as though it
might blow out at any moment, and was making a noise like big guns, and
the mast was shaking badly.

It was expected that the topgallant mast would go, but no