ard the
Hampshire to lunch, and afterwards several of our passengers
returned the visit. One of them brought back a small cur, which made
the fourth dog on board--rather too many, as they were always in the
way. Their number was soon reduced 50 per cent. One day what was
known as the "sailor's dog" mysteriously disappeared. Some thought
it had been thrown overboard, but it probably fell over
accidentally, as the dog was universally held to be the least
objectionable. Another, the strange dog, had to be poisoned. On the
10th January we met a German ship bound for Barbadoes from Buenos
Ayres. Here an opportunity for sending letters was gratefully
embraced. The captain promised to hand them over to the British
Consul at Barbadoes. One day, during a calm, the boats were lowered,
and several of us rowed about to look at the Hampshire from a
little distance, while some bathed in a tropical sea. There was no
danger of sharks, which keep away when several bathe together, or
even one, if he splashes about enough. The boatswain caught a
turtle, from which we had some capital soup. Turtles are very
tenacious of life. A knife was thrust into its throat, and its
jugular vein severed, but if it had not been cut up soon after it
would have lived many hours. Indeed, the heart alone kept beating
long after it was severed from the body.

I must say we were badly treated by the "monsters of the deep." They
never came out when wanted. We all expected to catch a shark some
day, but only once was one even seen, and then it was some distance
off, with its knife-like fin just showing above the water. It was
Sunday, too, when no fishing was allowed--a fact of which he was
evidently aware. These fellows are proverbially stupid, and will go
at a bait again and again, even though they must know it to be a
lure. Only once, too, did we catch an albatross, _the_ bird of the
Southern Ocean. That was by a line baited with a small piece of
pork. This was fastened to a round ring of iron, in which the hooked
beak of the bird caught, and so it was dragged on board. The captain
knocked it on the head, and it was then cut up. It measured 13 feet
across the wings, but many are larger than this. The beak was about
6 inches long, curved, and of great power. Sailors have no "ancient
mariner" sentiment as to killing the albatross--in fact, it would be
misplaced. The captain told us of a case he knew of where a man had
fallen overboard, when the albatrosses swo