In it, a trifle on the water, he
completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the
rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural
history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and
shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised
the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from
a boat, needed practice.
'You were,' he laid down the conditions, 'at issue with a heavy roll of
the sea, even in glorious weather. Fortunately, I had always been an
expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion. You found your
chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew
screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had
a wider target.' Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a
fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British
Museum. His word on that point was crisp. 'You had only to walk or row a
little, and you secured a new living thing. The cry of the outlook was
something discovered. The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was
not half so happily situate as we. It was all surprises.'
His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay--the
Promised Land, but naked and unkindly.
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