“When the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship, the crew descended down the thick-braided ropes mooring the leaky lifeboats to the Helen. Wallace finally sprang into action, hurrying down to his cabin, “now suffocatingly hot and full of smoke,†to see what might be saved. He grabbed a watch and some drawings he’d made of fish and palm varieties. He felt “a kind of apathy,†perhaps a result of shock and physical depletion, and failed to take his notebooks, full of observations he’d risked his life many times over to gather. All the bird skins, plants, insects, and other specimens trapped in the cargo hold were gone. Johnson, Kirk Wallace. The Feather Thief (p. 19). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ”
