“And then all hands were piped to clear the wreck, and make the ship snug; for we had some bad weather afterwards, and had to put into Sierra Leone to refit.
“Gil was in a swoon for a long time after; and then he took the fever bad, and only recovered by the skin of his teeth; but he never forgot what he had seen, nor I either, nor any of the hands, though we never talked about it. We knew we had seen something unearthly; even the captain and Lieutenant Freemantle, though they put down the damage to a waterspout for fear of alarming the men, knew differently, as we did. We had seen the great sea sarpint, if anybody had, every man-jack of us aboard! It was a warning, too, as poor Gil Saul had declared; for, strange to say, except himself and me, not a soul as was on board the Amphitrite when the reptile overhauled us, lived to see Old England again. The bones of all the others were left to bleach on the burning sands of the east coast of Africa, which has killed ten thousand more of our own countrymen with its deadly climate than we have saved slaves from slavery!”
“But, Jim,” said I, as the old sailor paused at the end of his yarn. “Do you think it was really the sea serpent? Might it not have been a waterspout, or a bit of floating wreck, which you saw in the fog?”
Jim Newman got grumpy at once, at the bare insinuation of such a thing.
“Waterspouts and bits of wreck,” said he sarcastically, “generally travel at the rate of twenty miles an hour when there is no wind to move them along, and a dead calm, don’t they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck smell like polecats when you’re a hundred miles from land, don’t they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains going through a tunnel, don’t they?”
I was silenced by Jim’s sarcasm, and humbly begged his pardon for doubting the veracity of his eyesight.
“Besides, Master Charles,” he urged, when he had once more been restored to his usual equanimity; “besides, you must remember that nearly in the same parts, and about the same time—in the beginning of the month of August, 1848—the sea sarpint, as people who have never seen it are so fond of joking of, was seen by the captain and crew of HMS Daedalus and the event was put down in the ship’s log, and reported officially to the Admiralty. I suppose you won’t go for to doubt the statement which was made by a captain in the navy, a gentleman, and a man of honour, and supported by the evidence of the lieutenant of the watch, the master, a midshipman, the quartermaster, boatswain’s mate, and the man at the wheel—the rest of the ship’s company being below at the time?”
“No, Jim,” said I, “that’s straight enough.”
“We was in latitude 5 degrees 30 minutes north, and longitude about 3 degrees east,” continued the old sailor, “when we saw it on the 1st of August, 1848, and they in latitude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, and longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, when they saw it on the 6th of the same month; so the curious reptile—for reptile he was—must have put the steam on when he left us!”
“Stirred up, probably, by your starboard broadside?” said I.