If you have seen the sun set in the tropics, you would despise my description; and, if not, I for one could never make you see it.

Suffice it that a petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthy tangent.

I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens.

I thought of an albatross that I had caught going out.

Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn.