Courtesy of Pall Mall Magazine.
Sea-Serpent Attacking a Pirate Ship.
Fanciful sketch, but the red flowing mane may have been suggested by an oarfish, of which specimens fifty feet long have been found.
“The sea-serpent yarn.”
“You persist in calling it a ‘yarn,’” his uncle warned him. “Get out of that habit, Perry, it won’t do you any good. It’s never safe to say that a certain thing does not exist, until you have absolute proof that it cannot exist. No one would have expected to find birds with teeth or lizards with wings, yet, as you know, there were plenty of these, and we have found many specimens. As for your way of talking about a sea-serpent ‘yarn,’ don’t forget that millions of sea-serpents swam in the oceans of long ago.”
“Could there be an Ichthyosaurus still living in the bottom of the sea?” hazarded the boy.
The professor wheeled on him in an instant.
“What was an Ichthyosaurus,” he asked sharply, “fish or reptile?”
“Reptile,” answered the boy promptly.
“Do true reptiles have gills?”