“Fooled you for a minute, didn’t they?” queried his leader.
“Yes,” the boy admitted, “they certainly did. But only for a minute.”
“Supposing you had never heard of porpoises, that you had seen them just once and that on a misty morning, seen them the way you saw them just now, heaving themselves clear out of the water, one after the other in a long wavering line, don’t you think you might have reported that you had seen the sea-serpent?”
“Likely enough,” the lad agreed. “But about the sea-serpent, Uncle George, I’ve often wondered. Do you suppose that there was ever any real reason for the yarn?”
“Why do you call it a yarn?” queried the scientist sharply.
“Why not?” was Perry’s astonished answer. “There isn’t any sea-serpent, is there?”
“You seem pesky sure about it,” his uncle retorted, with a distinct trace of irritation in his manner.
“But I thought every one knew it was a fake!”
“That what was a fake?”
