The Amsterdammer and I had gone to the prow, to try and peer a little further into the dense curling vapour, when a siren—I think that’s what you call the thing—gave such a sudden blood-curdling yell at our very elbow, it seemed as if we had trodden on the tail of the true and original Sea-serpent, and that the reptile was shrieking in agony.
From that time on, we had sea-serpents every other minute—whole swarms of them—infuriated, inquisitive or resigned—soprano, alto, tenor;—all whining, hooting and snorting; every one trying to howl all the others down.
Excuse my referring to it, but it was the best illustration I had yet got of Boyton’s verbs.
“Ik graauw, ik kef en ik kweel!” said one set of voices. “Ik krijsch, ik fluit en ik gil!” answered their rivals.
POLYPHEMUS AND THE SEA-SERPENT.
But the deep boom of new-comers swept the earlier songsters out of the field: “Ik rammel, ik ratel en ik scheur”. It was a regular chorus.
“Ik gier en ik piep”, squeaked the little tugs, “ik fop en ik jok”.
But the first musicians—the sentimental ones—wouldn’t be outdone. They were evidently turning over their grammars very rapidly, to get a really melancholy selection, for in another moment their lugubrious snuffle pierced the fog like a knife: “Ik wee-ee-een; ik krijt; en ik hui-ui-ui-l-l!”
There was one long-drawn-out sob, that rose and fell and rose again with such appalling and expressive anguish that I could have imagined half the Netherlands had turned into a gigantic sea-serpent, and had bitten off its own tongue. So human, too, was its tortured wail, that I instinctively thought of Polyphemus having his eye gouged out by Ulysses. The hero, you remember, did it with a burning pine. One has a horrible sympathy for Polyphemus, even though he is a monster and mythical.
Happily our Polyphemus only gave two or three of his prize yells. Then he seemed to settle into sleep, away down the river somewhere.