The _Seabird_ took it very leisurely. Day followed day and we saw no whales. I had to take my place in the hoops, and I searched the sea for whales until my eyes fairly ached. I noticed that as we cruised farther south, most of the birds were different from those of the North Atlantic and far more numerous. The most interesting to me were the albatross. They would come very near the vessel. They seemed to float along rather than fly like other birds, and their cry was somewhat like the braying of an ass. It is said that when they have gorged themselves with fish and jellyfish, they will sit motionless on the water and may be taken with the hand. One of them seemed almost bent on getting on the ship, and some of the men, watching their opportunity, captured him and secured him on the deck. He measured fifteen feet in spread of wings. The plumage was soft and mostly white. The beak was long and hooked at the point and was of a delicate pink. The most curious things about him were his webbed-feet with no hind toe or claw. The capture of the bird afforded a pleasant change in our lives and provided a theme of conversation for the rest of the day.
After covering six or seven thousand miles, we reached the Rio de la Plata, called by whalemen the River Plate. This is an estuary between Uruguay and Argentina, and is a famous whaling ground. Here once occurred one of the most terrible battles with a sperm whale of which there is any record. When struck, the whale cut the boat in two with his jaw and thrashed the wreck into bits. After the men were picked up, two other boats planted irons in him and he smashed both these boats to pieces. Of the men in the water, two could not swim, so they climbed up on the whale’s back and sat down just forward of the hump. Another boat arrived and took all the men on board. The whale had six harpoons in him, but he made no effort to escape. Two spare boats having come up, the whale tried to sweep his jaw through the bottom of one of them, but the craft was, for a time, well handled. He succeeded, however, in rushing through the boat, and after four boats, about twelve hundred fathoms of line and all the whaling gear were lost, the whale made off.
