On the occasions when they have pushed to shore an unconscious human being they have much more likely done it out of curiosity or for sport, as in riding the bow waves of a ship.
Its bows take the form of a beak, with two large painted eyes evoking the traditional seafarers' belief that the bird's image would help sailors return safely, like the migrants that return each spring and autumn.
Later that night, Oates wrote a letter to his mother. There are nineteen ponies on the Terra Nova now, he wrote. All the ponies are in a small room at the front of the ship.
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.
The Gloria Scott had been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was an old-fashioned, heavy-bowed, broad-beamed craft, and the new clippers had cut her out.
In an instant we swept the boat's head round again and pulled with all our strength for the place where the haze still trailing over the water marked the scene of this catastrophe.
But though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was descried.