“Some of them saw porpoises, without a doubt, like those you saw this morning. But, myself, I believe that most of the stories have started from appearances of the giant squid or calamary. You know, Perry, the squid has been known to reach fifty or sixty feet in length, from the tip of the broad arrow-like tail to the end of the longest tentacle. As squids swim tail first, and as their method of propulsion is by expelling water in little jets from a siphon which is situated near the head, and, moreover, as they often allow the tail (which might look like a head) to project half out of the water, their huge bulk would easily lead an observer to make a false estimate of their size. If you add to this the peculiar bubbling ripple caused by the squid’s curious method of swimming, the wake would give the effect of the animal forty or fifty feet longer than its true size. Squids are not at all uncommon, though they seldom stay long at the surface, and their appearances may be the basis of many sea-serpent stories.”
“But you do think that all the stories are a bit high, don’t you, Uncle George? I mean, you think they’re not just right?”
“I may be a little partial to the sea-serpent,” the scientist answered with a quizzical smile, “so I should never declare that there may not be some monster of the deep that is occasionally seen.”
“But there have been some awfully queer stories,” put in Perry, incredulously.
“Yes, there have been,” the professor admitted. “The early ones, particularly, seem more or less fabulous. For example, Perry, there was the story of the island found by the old Swedish bishop-explorer, Olaus Magnus. Do you know that one?”
“You bet I do,” said the boy emphatically. “Father’s got a picture of it in an old sketch-book of his at home. Wasn’t that the one in which the old explorer said he landed on an island, took possession of it in the name of the King of Sweden, had a church service there, and then decided to wind up with a feast? After a bit, when the fire really got hot, they smelt a smell of burning skin, the ‘island’ began to move, and the bishop and the sailors hardly had time to scramble back aboard the ship and cut the rope fastened to the grappling anchor they had cast ‘ashore,’ when the huge beast plunged down to the bottom of the sea. I know you think a good deal of sea-serpent stories, Uncle George, but I’m leery about that one.”
“I’ll confess,” the professor answered, laughing, “that even the fact that the explorer was a bishop doesn’t quite convince me. Yet Svere, King of Norway, claimed to have seen a similar creature, just as large, which he called a husguife.’ If you don’t believe a bishop, how about a king?”
“I think he fibbed, too,” was the boy’s ready answer.
The professor’s eyes twinkled.
“If you do sometime become a paleontologist, my boy,” he said, “you’ll have to learn to comment on other people’s reports in language that is—well, we’ll call it a little more scientific. It is safer, as well as more courteous.”