"Here! here! come quick! A snake! a snake!"
Doctor Bronson and Frank ran to the side, and looked in the direction where Fred pointed.
There, sure enough, was a snake swimming with his head a couple of inches out of the water, and taking things very leisurely. He propelled himself with his tail, which he swung easily from side to side, exactly as we see with the great majority of fishes. He made very little ripple on the water, and it required sharp eyes to discover him. They watched him as he swum away from the side of the ship, and in a very short time he was out of sight.
Meantime, the captured snake had been thrown overboard, as no one cared to preserve it, and the men did not wish to keep it on deck. "These reptiles come to life sometimes after they're killed," said one of the old mariners, "and before you know it they lay hold of your foot if it is the first thing handy."
The Doctor and the youths walked aft, and seated themselves under the awning, where they could look at the receding shores of the islands. A few moments after they were seated, Frank asked the Doctor if he had ever seen a real sea-serpent.
The Doctor smiled, as he answered in the negative.
"But is there such a thing as a sea-serpent?" Frank persisted.
"That is a direct question," the Doctor responded, "but I am not able to answer it directly. Before I say yes or no I must make an explanation, or rather I will tell you what is known on the subject, and then you may make the answer for yourselves.
"It is the fashion of the time," he continued, "to laugh at any one who thinks he has seen what may be a sea-serpent. On several occasions reputable ship-captains have come forward with their officers and crew to make oath to what they had witnessed, and their chief reward has been to be ridiculed by the newspapers generally: they have been treated as deliberate liars, or it is hinted that they were intoxicated at the time they supposed they were looking at a sea-serpent. The result has been to make mariners reluctant to give any kind of testimony concerning the possible existence of a sea-serpent, through fear of being treated as impostors.