Atlantic Adventure by Francis Chichester

Author:Francis Chichester [Chichester, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub

6. The Death of the Pigeon

This day, June 21st, brought tragedy: the death of the pigeon.

For some days I had been becoming more and more worried about him, and during the storm I thought that he was going to die. He was half naked—you could see his skin through his feathers—and I felt very unhappy about him. Then I had an inspiration, and remembered what I called ‘the Haggis box’. That was a box that Stalky Miller, the artist who draws maps for us, gave me with some shortcake and other things in to take on the voyage. It used to be a box for a coffee percolator, so it had a round hole in it, and made a wonderful dovecote. This was the box that I used to make a nest for Pidgy when I decided that things were just too rough for him in the cockpit, and that he would have to be brought into the cabin. I secured the box to the roof of the cabin, just above the galley. I wrapped him in a bit of my old pyjamas, and after sitting listlessly for a while, he went to sleep, with his tail sticking out of the box. He slept for some time, and awoke with a start at a splash of water on the cabin porthole, and after his sleep he seemed a bit more cheerful.

When I had finished doing repairs, and cleaning up the boat after the storm, I thought that the pigeon’s nest ought to he cleaned out too, and I also thought that the pigeon himself ought to have some air and movement. So I put him back in the cockpit, cleaned out his nest, and lined it with some clean sheets of paper which John Anderson had given me originally to prepare notes on for my radiotelephone messages. Pidgy sat on the counter for a bit, and then made to fly off, as he often did, to do a circuit of the boat. I thought that a little flight would be good for him, so I said, ‘Yes, go on,’ and waved him off. He took off, but stalled into the water a few feet away. He flapped madly to get off again, but couldn’t make it, and then flapped towards me, half in and halt out of the water, trying to catch us up.

I put the boat round at once and touched him the first time round, but it was very difficult. You could only reach the water where the freeboard is lowest, and then only by sticking your body well out over the side under the lower lifeline. To bring the boat right up to him meant that I couldn’t see him from the helm for the last 50 feet or so, because he was hidden by the side of the boat itself. I tried to scoop him out with the gash (slop) bucket on the end of the boathook, but he thought that I was attacking him, and tried to evade the bucket.

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