It is interesting to meet birds hundreds of miles from land. When the
ship is going at her greatest speed, twelve or thirteen miles an hour,
these birds fly faster, some of them forty and fifty miles, making you
feel how they surpass man in all his means of speed. One is astonished
at their quickness of sight. You throw pieces of paper, for example,
overboard, and though you have not been able for half an hour to see a
bird, straightway they will come one by one around you, but you cannot
tell whence. Their sharpness of sight also is marvellous, shown in
their discovering fishes beneath the surface of the water, even when
the sea is troubled.