Seeing nothing for the moment likely to have alarmed the sailor, he was about to turn off, but only to start the next minute, and stand clinging with both hands to the rail, for some fifteen or twenty yards away the erst calm, heaving sea began to be violently agitated, running as it were with the swiftness of a mill-stream; and then something dull and glistening and shining like a halo appeared just beneath the surface, rising till it was quite clear of the water, and passing the schooner in one broad pale streak.
He was too much astonished to be startled, and for a few moments the only idea that he could form was that a good-sized vessel had careened over on to its side and was swiftly gliding along almost level with the water.
Then all at once something of the same moonlit glistening tint, but long and sinuous, slowly rose up eight or ten feet above the sea; then higher and higher till it was double that altitude, and in his excitement and agitation he realised that it was ended or begun by a snake-like head something after the fashion of that of a huge conger, the eyes being many inches across and dull and heavy after the fashion seen in a deep-sea fish.
One moment he thought it eel-like, the next that it was some serpent, while to his utter astonishment what he took to be its neck rose higher in a graceful swan-like shape, beautiful in curve as it was horrible in its gleaming, pallid, slimy aspect. One of the great eyes seemed turned to him with a peculiar glare, while as he fixed his own upon it as if unable to resist the attraction, he made out that from behind the curve the elongated body of the creature rose just above the surface, carrying out the semblance on a great scale to some swan-like half-fishy creature, and then with a quick rush as if the water were being hurled from it by enormously powerful fin-like paddles, the strange fish, reptile, or whatever it was, had passed on into the hazy moonlit night and was gone.
“Hullo here! Anything the matter, Rodd?” cried the familiar voice of Dr Robson, as he came quickly forward, followed by the skipper. “Where is it?”
“Where is it, uncle?” faltered the boy.
“Yes; that man Cross came running down to us in the cabin to say that they had seen the sea-serpent again.”
Rodd slowly raised one hand from the rail to which he had been holding, and pointed outward over the sea.
“Well,” said Uncle Paul, “what are you pointing out? Plenty of moonlight, and glorious phosphorescence, but where’s the sea-serpent? Where did it show again? Why, what’s the matter, boy?” he continued, catching his nephew by the arm and taking his hand. “Don’t stand staring like that. Your hand’s all wet, and like ice! Have you been frightened?”
“I—don’t know, uncle, I suppose so,” said the boy slowly and dreamily. “I never saw anything like it before, and—and—it came so close to the schooner. I think I thought it was going to make a snatch at me and take me under water. But don’t ask me now, please. I don’t feel quite right. I suppose I am cowardly; but it made Gregg run away.”