“Why, sir,” said I, just making up my mind that I had made a mistake in my first diagnosis of the nature of the brown mass that had now risen to the surface, “why, sir, I believe it is something alive.”
“Something alive?”
“That thing off there,” I replied, pointing to the object that had attracted my attention.
He stepped to my side quickly and shaded his eyes under the palm of his hand as he gazed at the peculiar looking brown patch.
“A whale’s back?” I suggested, as he remained silent.
“No. It hasn’t got slope enough,” replied Mr. Alf Barney. “By George, though! it’s alive.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “I believed it moved—there!”
A tremor of life seemed to seize the object and passed all through it. Whatever it was, its length was fifty or sixty feet.
“Maybe it’s dying,” I said. “Some great beast——”
“Not a bat-fish,” he muttered, half raising his rifle.