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A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a businesslike style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect--the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder.
What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his?
For this one isn't the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offal--and the more out of date it is the better he likes it.
Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.
January 5.

At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin (lioness) and ceased from our long due-west course along the southern shore of Australia.

Turning this extreme southwestern corner, we now take a long straight slant nearly N.W., without a break, for Ceylon.