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"'Yes, said I, scanning the sea, 'there are. "He produced a pair of binoculars from his coat-tail pocket, adjusted them, and raised them to his eyes. "'H'm! What sort of ducks? "I looked more carefully, holding both hands over my forehead. "'Surf-ducks and widgeon. There is one bufflehead among them no, two; the rest are coots, I replied. "'This, cried the professor, 'is most astonishing.
I have good eyes, but I can't see a blessed thing without these binoculars! "'It's not extraordinary, said I; 'the surf-ducks and coots any novice might recognize; the widgeon and buffleheads I should not have been able to name unless they had risen from the water. It is easy to tell any duck when it is flying, even though it looks no bigger than a black pin-point.
"Far out at sea the white gulls floated and drifted on the water, or sailed up into the air to flap lazily for a moment and settle back among the waves. Strings of black surf-ducks passed, their strong wings tipping the surface of the water; single wandering coots whirled from the breakers into lonely flight towards the horizon.
The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the black surf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tipped wings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth. Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in the ocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in the Atlantic.
Natives of tropic islands pass a large part of their lives in water, and seem as much at home in the sea as on the land; swim and dive, pursue fishes, play in the waves like surf-ducks and seals, and explore the coral gardens and groves and seaweed meadows as if truly amphibious. Even the natives of the far north bathe at times.
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