t was
a huge marine monster, stretching to a length quite beyond the
dimensions of an ordinary fish, was evident to all the observers. No
one, in short, had any doubt as to its being the sea-serpent, or one of
the species to which the animal or animals so frequently before seen
belonged. The distance at which this one was, for ten minutes or a
quarter of an hour, visible, made it impossible to give a description of
its apparent dimensions so accurate as to carry conviction to the
sceptical. For us who witnessed it, it was enough to be convinced that
the thing was a reality. But one of the spectators, Dr Amos Binney, a
gentleman of scientific attainments, drew up a minute account of it,
which is deposited in the archives of one of the Philosophical Societies
of Boston. I was and am quite satisfied that on this occasion I had a
partial and indistinct but positive view of this celebrated nondescript.
But had the least doubt rested on my mind, it would have been entirely
removed by the event of the day following the one just recorded. On that
day, a little before noon, my wife was sitting, as was her wont, reading
on the upper piazza of the hotel. She was alone. The gentlemen,
including myself and my son, were, as usual, absent at Boston, and the
ladies were scattered about in various directions. She was startled by a
cry from the house of "The sea-serpent! The sea-serpent!" But this had
been so frequent, by the way of joke, since the event of the preceding
day, and was so like "The wolf, the wolf!" of the fable, that it did not
attract her particular attention for a moment or two, until she observed
two women belonging to the family of the hotel-keeper running along the
piazza towards the corner nearest the sea, with wonder in their eyes,
and the cry of "The serpent, the serpent! He is turning, he is turning!"
spontaneously bursting from their lips. Then my wife did fix her looks
in the direction they ran; and sure enough she saw, apparently quite
close beyond the line formed by the rising ground above the rocks, a
huge serpent, gliding gracefully through the waves, having evidently
performed the action of turning round. In an instant it was in a
straight line, moving rapidly on; and after coasting for a couple of
minutes the north-west front of the hotel, and (as accurately as the
astonished observer could calculate) looking as it stretched at full
length in the water about the length of the piazza, that is to say,
about n