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Updated: June 3, 2025
It floated freely upon the breeze; which the filmy mist, though half disclosing, could not altogether conceal. The deep red colour was too scarce upon the ocean to be mistaken for the livery of any of its denizens. It could not be the tail-feathers of the tropic bird so prized by the chiefs of Polynesia; nor yet the scarlet pouch of the sea-hawk. It could be nothing else than a "bit o' buntin'."
And now all eyes were turned towards the sea-hawk, and became fixed upon him with glances that expressed surprise; for, instead of again soaring upward, and renewing his pursuit either of the creature that he had so clumsily permitted to escape him, or some other of its kind, the bird was seen to stay down upon the surface of the sea, his wings spread to their full extent, and flapping the water with such violence as to raise the spray in a thick cloud over and around him!
He shrinks to a speck on an illimitable ocean. I spent long afternoons lying on the cabin-house, watching the frigates, the tropics, gulls, boobys, and other sea-birds that sported through the sky in great numbers. The frigate-birds were called by the sailors the man-of-war bird, and also the sea-hawk.
Where it is once securely established the land becomes desolate, as the tree inevitably perishes which the sea-hawk chooses for its nest; while freedom, on the contrary, flourishes like the tannen, 'on the loftiest and least sheltered rocks, and clothes with its refreshing verdure what, without it, would frown in naked and incurable sterility.
He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for the sea-hawk who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler.
Dicky Popo, who had been entered on board, remained with us, and became a great favourite both with officers and men. It was not till long afterwards that I heard of the fate of the Sea-Hawk and the survivors of her piratical crew.
Why not certain birds in the air, whose body is many times lighter than that of a fish, and whose skeleton is constructed with air vessels to buoy them up into the azure fields of the sky? The sea-hawk may seldom require what is ordinarily termed rest.
Finding that Dicky Popo, as the black called himself, understood English pretty well, the commander questioned him further, and learned many more particulars about the ship we had just chased. She was the Sea-Hawk, belonging to Havana, fully as large as the Heroine, with as numerous a crew, and carrying two more guns than we did; so that, if well fought, she would prove a formidable antagonist.
It differs from most other birds frequenting the sea in the fact of its feet being but slightly webbed, and its claws being talons, like those of hawks or eagles. Otherwise, also, does it resemble these last birds, so much that the sailors, noting the resemblance, indifferently call it "sea-hawk," "man-of-war hawk," and "man-of-war eagle."
"Me Dicky Popo, please, sar," he said, giving a haul at his hair; "me loyal British subject once serve His Majesty but de nigger slave-catchers find me ashore, carry me off, and sell me to still bigger rascals. Dey ship me aboard wid oder slaves; and den a bigger rascal still take de whole of us on board de Sea-Hawk dere.
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