“Like a turtle?” I said.
“Yes, my lad,” he continued, “a great flat-bodied turtle, that might have been thirty or forty foot long and half as much across, while it had a great neck like a swan.”
“But what made you think it was like that?” I asked.
“Because you could see its back out of the water now and then, and it wasn’t like a serpent, for it rose over like a turtle’s, and sometimes it was higher out of the water sometimes lower; and what I saw as plain as could be was the water rippling up fore and aft, just as if the thing had nippers which it was working to send it along.”
“Did your captain see it?” I asked at last.
“No, my lad, for we was too full of wonderment just then to do more than stare at the thing, till all at once it seemed to stretch its neck out straight with quite a dart, as if it had caught something to eat, and then it wasn’t there.”
“Didn’t it come up again?” said Tom.
“No, my lad, we never see it no more.”
“How far was it from the shore?” I asked.
“Five or six miles, my lad, more or less,” he replied; and just then there was a call for all hands to take in sail, and our yarn-spinner went away.