and its denizens than I. 'Well,' he replied,
'it is either a sea serpent or a whale.' At the mere mention of the
word whale I was alert. I have always wanted to kill a whale.
'Captain,' said I, 'can't you tie an anchor onto a hawser, and bait
the flukes with a boa constrictor and make sure of him?' He looked at
me contemptuously. 'Whales eats fish,' said he, 'and they don't bite
at no anchors. Whales has brains, whales has.' 'What shall we do?' I
asked. 'Steam closer,' said the Captain, and we did so."

Munchausen took a long breath and for the moment was silent.

"Well?" said I.

"Well, Ananias," said he. "We resolved to wait. As the Captain said to
me, 'Fishin' is waitin'.' So we waited. 'Coax him along,' said the
Captain. 'How can we do it?' I asked. 'By kindness,' said he. 'Treat
him gently, persuasive-like and he'll come.' We waited four days and
nobody moved and I grew weary of coaxing. 'We've got to do something,'
said I to the Captain. 'Yes,' said he, 'Let's _make_ him move. He
doesn't seem to respond to kindness.' 'But how?' I cried. 'Give him an
electric shock,' said the Captain. 'Telegraph him his mother's sick
and may be it'll move him.' 'Can't you get closer to him?' I demanded,
resenting his facetious manner. 'I can, but it will scare him off,'
replied the Captain. So we turned all our batteries on the sea. The
dynamo shot forth its bolts and along about four o'clock in the
afternoon there was the whale drawn by magnetic influence to the side
of _The Lyre_. He was a beauty, Ananias," Munchausen added with
enthusiasm. "You never saw such a whale. His back was as broad as the
deck of an ocean steamer and in his length he exceeded the dimensions
of _The Lyre_ by sixty feet."

"And still you got him on deck?" I asked,--I, Ananias, who can stand
something in the way of an exaggeration.

"Yes," said Munchausen, lighting his cigar, which had gone out.
"Another storm came up and we rolled and rolled and rolled, until I
thought _The Lyre_ was going to capsize."

"But weren't you sea-sick?" I asked.

"Didn't have a chance to be," said Munchausen. "I was thinking of the
whale all the time. Finally there came a roll in which we went
completely under, and with a slight pulling on the line the whale was
landed by the force of the wave and laid squarely upon the deck."

"Great Sapphira!" said I. "But you just said he was wider and longer
than the yacht!"

[Illustration: "There was the whale drawn by magnetic