When a bird was hooked they hauled in the line, still from shelter,
till it was alongside. This was the ticklish moment. The hook,
merely a hollow and acute-angled triangle of sheet-copper floating on
a piece of board at the end of the line, held the bird by pinching
its curved beak into the acute angle. The moment the line slacked
the bird was released. So, when alongside, this was the problem: to
lift the bird out of the water, straight up the side of the ship,
without once jamming and easing and slacking. When they tried to do
this from shelter invariably they lost the bird.
They worked out a method. When the bird was alongside the several
men with revolvers turned loose on me, while one man, overhauling and
keeping the line taut, leaped to the rail and quickly hove the bird
up and over and inboard. I know this long-distance revolver fire
seriously bothered me. One cannot help jumping when death, in the
form of a piece of flying lead, hits the rail beside him, or the mast
over his head, or whines away in a ricochet from the steel shrouds.
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