"Perhaps they stopped for Mr. Hubbard to make a sketch," said
Ellsworth to Elinor.
"Hardly, I should think; time and tide, you know; wait for no man—not even to be sketched."
"But Hazlehurst told me his friend Hubbard had promised to immortalize the Petrel and her crew by a picture; perhaps he chose the moment of departure; you say she appeared to great advantage then."
"I should think he would prefer waiting for some more striking moment. Who knows what adventures they may meet with! Mr. de Vaux expects to win a race; perhaps they may catch a whale, or see the sea-serpent."
"No doubt Mr. Stryker would try to catch the monster, if they were to meet with him; his fishing ambition is boundless," said Mrs. Creighton.
"But there is no fashionable apparatus for catching sea-serpents," observed Elinor; "and Mr. Stryker's ambition is all fashionable."
"Stryker is not much of an Izaak Walton, certainly," remarked Ellsworth. "He calls it murder, to catch a trout with a common rod and a natural fly. He will scarcely be the man to bring in the sea-serpent; he would go after it though, in a moment, if a regular European sportsman were to propose it to him."
"I almost wonder we have not yet had an English yacht over here, whale-hunting, or sea-serpent-hunting," said Mrs. Creighton; "they are so fond of novelty and wild-goose chasing of any kind."
"It would make a lion of a dandy, at once," said Ellsworth, "if he could catch the sea-serpent."
{"lion" = social celebrity}