“It doesn’t look like anything in particular,” he said, “it’s more like a cross between a seal and a whale.”
The scientist nodded approvingly.
“Once in a while, Perry,” he said, “you show a whole lot of good sense. Professor Owen, the great naturalist, when the Dædalus sketch was shown him, wrote a long article suggesting that what Captain M’Quhae had seen was a sea-elephant, of which specimens have been found nearly thirty feet in length. And a sea-elephant is of the family of the seals.
“Personally, I rather question whether Professor Owen was right, because so conspicuous a thing as the trunk-like prolongation of the nose, at least a foot long, would not have escaped the attention of sailors. Seamen’s eyes are keen for objects in the water. Some of the supposed sea-serpents probably have been squids, some have been schools of porpoises, some have been ribbon-fish, but I think the monster seen from the quarter-deck of the Dædalus probably some aged and patriarchal creature of the seal variety, a mammal and not a reptile, a creature of this age, not of an age of two million years ago.”
The porpoises had passed far out of sight long before this conversation was ended, but his uncle’s belief that there was some huge creature still swimming in the seas quickened the lad’s interest, and he scanned the waters with the professor’s field-glass eagerly and often. He thought of the phrase “beginner’s luck” and his hopes continued unabated.
Two days later land was sighted, and the steamer came to the great gateway of that sea which has formed the basin of civilization, that great Mediterranean Sea on which Venice, Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Phœnicia have played their part. To the right, lay mysterious Africa; to the left, frowning and sheer, rose the great rock of embattled Gibraltar, Great Britain’s guardian of the straits. The boy was enjoying the sight of land and picturing to himself the scene if the dogs of war were loosed and that front of rock should suddenly belch forth a flame curtain of fire and death before which no vessel could live for a moment.
“No signs of Scylla and Charybdis,” said a voice behind him.
“That’s so, Uncle George,” the boy said, turning, “this is where the old Greeks believed Scylla to be, isn’t it? But I’d rather tackle that six-headed monster, in spite of all her appetite, even though each head took a man from the crew, as it did from Ulysses’ ship, than I would run the gauntlet of the guns of Gibraltar let loose on us. Still, even Scylla might be uncomfortable. What do you suppose was the basis of that old story, Uncle George!”
“Personification of the peril of adventure,” was the reply. “That is why Scylla and Charybdis were first said to hold guard over the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, while afterwards the twin terrors of the ravening whirlpool and the six-headed man-eating woman monster were located at Gibraltar. As the Straits of Messina became more familiar, the terror had to be put farther away, where only the most daring would venture.
“Remember, Perry, that the Greeks believed they saw a god or a goddess or a demon in all the forces of Nature. The sea was under the rule of Poseidon, or Neptune, as the Romans called him; the dawn goddess Eos, or Aurora, was the mother of the Winds, such as Boreas, the North Wind and Zephyr, the West Wind. So, you see, the Greeks felt sure that every point of danger must be guarded by some kind of demon or monstrous form, while beautiful places were inhabited by fair maidens. After all, Perry, it’s not so very long ago since people believed in mermaids. So far as that goes, some people believe in them still.”