“That’s a little difficult to say,” was the guarded reply. “There’s not much evidence to go on. There seems no doubt that Friis and Grippenhjelme found something. The remarks about a parrot’s beak by one, and the other’s reference to a polyp suggest that perhaps a giant squid and an octopus were washed ashore together, and if, as probable, their flesh already was decaying, examination would be apt to be very brief. Don’t forget, Perry, that the size was only an estimate. Even the most conservative guesses shrink under the application of a two-foot rule.”
“Yet you seem to think, Uncle George, that some of the sea-serpent reports might have something in them?”
“All of them are based on something,” was the reply, “and there are a few that one hesitates to deny. It would almost seem certain that there are some large creatures in the sea, in addition to the whales, though probably nothing as large as a full-sized sulphur-bottom whale. It is equally certain that, whatever these creatures may be, they are not serpents, though they may possess snakelike features. One has to be careful about denials,” he went on, taking a battered old note-book out of his pocket, and turning over the leaves, “because some reports are quite circumstantial. The most famous of them was the report once made by the captain and officers of a British man-o’-war, the frigate Dædalus, in 1848. I thought I had that note in here. Yes, here it is.
“Listen to this, Perry,” he went on, “and perhaps your disbelief will have a jolt:
“‘I have the honor,’” he read, “‘to acquaint you for the information of my Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at 5 o’clock P. M. on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24° 44´ S. and longitude 9° 22´ E. (1,000 miles west of the coast of South Africa) with the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the NW, with a long ocean swell from the SW, the ship on the port tack heading NE by N, something very unusual was seen by Mr. Sartoris, midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam. The circumstance was immediately reported by him to the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr. Wm. Barrett, the master, I was at the time walking the quarterdeck.
“‘On our attention being called to the object, it was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head and neck kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea, and, as nearly as we could approximate, by comparing it with the length of what our main-topsail yard would show in the water, there was, at the very least, 60 feet of the animal, à fleur d’eau (flush with the surface of the water), no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance, I should easily have recognized his features with the naked eye, and it did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the SW, which it held on at the pace of from 12 to 15 miles per hour, apparently on some determined purpose.
“‘The diameter of the serpent was about 15 or 16 inches behind the head, which was, without any doubt, that of a snake, and it was never, during the twenty minutes that it remained in sight of our glasses, once below the surface of the water; its color a dark brown, with yellowish-white about the throat.
“‘It had no fins, but something more like the mane of a horse, or rather, a bunch of seaweed, washing about its back. It was seen by the quartermaster, the boatswain’s mate and the man at the wheel, in addition to myself and officers above mentioned.
“‘I am having a drawing of the serpent made from a sketch taken immediately after it was seen, which I hope to have ready for transmission to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty by to-morrow’s post.’
“‘Peter M’Quhae, Capt.’”