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Updated: May 6, 2025
He continued his flight; and in the afternoon, when we settled down upon the surface of the sea, there was not a sign of bad weather. The "Terror" is a sea bird, an albatross or frigate-bird, which can rest at will upon the waves! Only we have this advantage, that fatigue has never any hold upon this metal organism, driven by the inexhaustible electricity!
On such occasions she used to make her escape on deck. She never seemed tired of watching the flying-fish skimming over the ocean, or the dolphins swimming by, or the sea-birds which passed in rapid flight overhead, or watching the magnificent frigate-bird as it soared on high, and then shot down into the ocean to grasp its finny prey.
Dat's what am doin' it." "O, a frigate-bird!" said Ben Brace, recognising in Snowball's synonyme one of the most noted wanderers of the ocean, the Pelicanus aquila of the naturalists, but which, from its swift flight and graceful form, is better known to mariners under the appellation given to it by Snowball. "Where away?" interrogated the sailor. "I don't see bird o' any sort. Where away, Snowy?"
Such birds as the stormy petrel and the frigate-bird have wings that are broad, convex, and of great length in contrast with the lightness and small bulk of their bodies, for which reason they are able to sustain themselves in the air for days without rest.
At the termination of that time, an exclamatory phrase, escaping from his lips, proclaimed the discovery of some object that, to his mind, accounted for the odd behaviour of the albacores. "De frigate-bird!" was the phrase that came mutteringly from between Snowball's teeth. "Ya, ya, dar am two ob dem, de cock an' hen, I s'pose. Dat 'counts for de scariness of dese hya fish.
The reappearance of the sword-fish, if it was the same that had already paid them a visit, or more likely the discovery and pursuit of the "school" of flying-fish, had caused the albacores to decamp from the neighbourhood of the Catamaran; so that with the exception of that taken from the talons of the frigate-bird, not one was any longer to be seen.
What can be plainer than that the webbed feet of ducks and geese are formed for swimming? yet there are upland geese with webbed feet which rarely or never go near the water; and no one except Audubon has seen the frigate-bird, which has all its four toes webbed, alight on the surface of the sea.
How could it be otherwise: since the albacore is too strong for the beak of the frigate-bird, too big for even its capacious throat to swallow; while, on the other hand, the frigate-bird never ventures to intrude itself on the cruising-ground of this powerful fish?
But to the progenitor of the upland goose and of the frigate-bird, webbed feet no doubt were as useful as they now are to the most aquatic of existing birds.
These the frigate-bird remorselessly robs of their legitimate prize, first compelling them to relinquish it in the air, and then adroitly seizing it before it gets back to the water. The storm is the season of plenty to this singular bird of prey; as then it can capture many kinds of fish upon the surface of the waves.
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