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Wednesday they had pardelas and great quantities of seaweed. Columbus began to be sure that they had passed "the islands" and were nearing the continent of Asia. Thursday they had a flock of pardelas, two pelicans, a rabihorcado and a gull. Friday, the fifth of October, brought pardelas and flying-fishes.
The present keeper received me with the welcome always accorded a visitor to out-of-the-world places. He corroborated all that my Indian sailors had claimed for the rabihorcado, and added the interesting information that lighthouse-keepers desired the extinction of the birds because the guano, deposited by them on the roofs of the keepers' houses, poisoned the rain water all they had to drink.
It glinted in the sunlight. The rabihorcado dropped in easy, downward curve and caught it as it fell. So the struggle for existence continued till I seemed to see all the world before me with its myriads of wild creatures preying upon one another; the spirit of nature, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, continuing ceaseless and imperturbable in its inscrutable design.
Here was the haunt of a strange bird, called by Indians rabihorcado, and it was said to live off the booby, another strange sea-bird. The natives of the coast solemnly averred that when the rabihorcado could not steal fish from the booby he killed himself by hanging in the brush. I did not believe such talk. The Spanish appeared to be rabi, meaning rabies, and horcar, to hang.
Millions of marine creatures swarmed in the labyrinthine waterways. Then, as we neared the land, "Rabihorcado!" exclaimed Manuel, pointing to a black cloud hovering over the island. As we approached the sandy strip I made it out to be about half a mile long, lying only a few feet above the level of the sea.
Conviction came upon me that it was instinctive for the booby to kill the parasitical rabihorcado; and likewise instinctive for the rabihorcado to preserve the life of the booby. A shout from Manuel directed me toward the extreme eastern end of the island. On the way I discovered many little dead birds, and the farther I went the more I found.
They changed, now one black demon swooping down, and then the other, in calculating, pitiless pursuit. How glorious she was in poise and swerve and sweep! For what seemed a long time neither rabihorcado touched her. What distance she could have placed between them but for that faithful mother instinct!
They saw a bird called "'Rabihorcado, which never alights at sea, nor goes twenty leagues from land," wrote the confident Columbus; "Nothing is wanting but the singing of the nightingale," he says. Sunday, the thirtieth, brought "tropic-birds" again, "a very clear sign of land." Monday the journal shows them seven hundred and seven leagues from Ferro. Tuesday a white gull was the only visitor.
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