“Ay, we did. When the water had got right down low, you could see ’em squirming about like snakes, and when they’d got all we could see they laid down boards over the mud, and punched about in the soft places when great fellows kept coming up to the top, and they got no end more. They were the biggest eels ever I see, and as fat as butter.”
“Were they though?” said Tom.
“Ay, they were, my lads; and what I wanted to say was this—If so be as those fish could live in that bit of a three-acre pool without people knowing of their being there, don’t you think there can be no end of big fishes and things in the great waters, thousands of miles from shore, such as menfolks has never seen?”
“Well, it do seem likely,” said Tom; “but I never could swallow the sea-serpent.”
“No, my lad, more likely to swallow you,” said the sailor drily.
“But come now,” said Tom drily. “Did you ever come across the great sea-serpent?”
“A mate o’ mine,” said the sailor, “told me he once saw out Newfoundland way part of a great cuttle-fish that had been washed ashore after a storm. It was a great jellyfish sort of thing, and it was thirty foot long; and he said he was sure it couldn’t have been more than half of it, and the next day he saw one of its arms all full of suckers, and it was twenty foot long.”
“Well, that must have been a pleasant sort of thing,” said Tom, as I sat there listening thoughtfully, for the sailor seemed disposed to go on talking.
“I remember one year, fifteen years ago I daresay it is, we were going from Singapore to Hong Kong, and it was a strangely hot calm time, when all at once away about a mile on our lee bow I saw something rise up out of the sea five-and-twenty or thirty feet, as it seemed to be, but it went down again directly; and I rubbed my eyes, thinking it was fancy, but directly after out it came again, making a curious kind of thrust like as if it was a long neck of something under the water. Then down it went again, and I called the officer of the watch to look at it; and he came with his glass, laughing-like, but just then out it came again and he tried to get a glimpse of it through his glass, but he never could be quick enough, for there was no telling where the thing would dart out its head, and when it did come up it went down again directly.
“I was in hopes it would come nigher, but it went the other way, shooting out its head once when it was a good way off, and then we did not see it any more.”