efore long; when, all at once, one of my mates claps his
hand on my shoulder, and he says--`Lookye yonder, mate.' `Why, it's the
sea-sarpent!' says another. `Well, that is a rum un,' says another.
And then we stood looking at what seemed to be a great snake swimming,
with twenty or thirty feet of its neck outer water; and it was holding
it up in a curve just like a swan, and sometimes its head was right up
high and sometimes curved down close to the water with its neck in a
loop, and all the time it was going along five or six knots an hour.
`Why, it _is_ the sea-sarpent!' says another of our mates, `look all
behind there; you can see its back as it swims, 'tis a hundred foot
long, see if it isn't!' I looked, and sure enough it did seem to be a
great length behind, nearly covered by the water; but, as I stood, it
didn't seem to me like a snake swimming, for it seemed more than ever as
if what we saw was a great slimy slaty-coloured thing, the make of a
swan, swimming with its body nearly all under water and its head out;
or, as I afterwards thought, just like one of the big West Indy turtles,
such as you'll see by and by if you're lucky."

"Like a turtle?" I said.

"Yes, my lad," he continued, "a great flat-bodied turtle, that might
have been thirty or forty foot long and half as much across, while it
had a great neck like a swan."

"But what made you think it was like that?" I asked.

"Because you could see its back out of the water now and then, and it
wasn't like a serpent, for it rose over like a turtle's, and sometimes
it was higher out of the water sometimes lower; and what I saw as plain
as could be was the water rippling up fore and aft, just as if the thing
had nippers which it was working to send it along."

"Did your captain see it?" I asked at last.

"No, my lad, for we was too full of wonderment just then to do more than
stare at the thing, till all at once it seemed to stretch its neck out
straight with quite a dart, as if it had caught something to eat, and
then it wasn't there."

"Didn't it come up again?" said Tom.

"No, my lad, we never see it no more."

"How far was it from the shore?" I asked.

"Five or six miles, my lad, more or less," he replied; and just then
there was a call for all hands to take in sail, and our yarn-spinner
went away.

CHAPTER SIX.

ONWARD.

"That was a rum sort of tale, Mas'r Harry," said Tom as soon as we were
alone. "Do you believe him?"

"Yes,