The Lafayette gazette. [volume] (Lafayette, La.) 1893-1921, 1895-04-06

by the prongs CT Neptune's tr;dert!'
said he. a sea serpent! A frightful
monster OF the deep, arlnored with
hideous bony scales, in mortal combat
with some leviathan that has crossed
Its path! Nor the captain still shout
ing, pale and trembling. No! Not
combat! The leviathan is not fghtingi
1t is struggling to escape! Mighty as
1T is, it is but prey of the awful serpent
like sparrow swooped down upon by
hawk! 1t Is a whale-a whale the like
in size of which I've never seen in oil
my forty years OF sailing on the salty
seas! His girth a lead line fifty fathorns
long would scarcely once go round, and
yet the serpent is coiled about it full a
spouting geysers from the sea are but
the rising and the falling Of the free
parts of the serpent, this one now rear
ing aloft the monsters fearful head;
that one now being his convolnting cx-
tren1fty, tipped with an awful barb!
They rise and fall by the terrible i'm
pulse OF the serpent's assault upon the
whale, which he spins and whirls and
churns in the deep as a mill wheel
might be spun by the rush of inpel1ing
watersl The black objects are other
whales, agitated and terror-stricken
spectators of their mighty fellows
deadly environment! Hark!' the cap.
tain still with the glass to his eye. and
growing pa}er and paler.
lit was not necessary for US to hearlk-
en-. A deaf man could almost have
heard the sounds that came to us over
the sea from the scene of that awful
contest. Boom! boom! booml Like tho
hoarse intonations of saluting can
non.
"'ny the rusty key of Davy Jones'
loclSer!' the captain shouted. The avv-
full compress of that serpent's coil has
bust the whale! Three times the great
lcviathan's tremendous bulk has bust,
with n noise like thunder! And now
they sinl1-the horrible serpent has
gone below-to gorge his mighty plum
der!'
1.-The glass fell from the captains
hand. Seasoned as he was by forty
years afloat, and familiar with the APP
palling things the boundless ocean
breeds. he tainted dead away upon the
deck. In the excitement following the
captains collapse all save the fetch
ing of him to was forgotten, and when
at last he was out of his swoon and
somewhat himself again tho whales
that had been terror-striclken witnesses
of the sen serpcnt's capture OF their
mate had disappeared. This chagrined
the captain. According to his descrip-
ton of them, any one OF these whales
would have been an unheard-of prize.
But they had slipped away and were
out of eight. .
"'We II chase themv said the cap.
tain. L wall not leave these mysterious
seas until kill n vl1ale!'
$50 we sailed in the presumed wake
of the whales. Two days VIC sailed.
the captain changed his course and
sailed sou'wcst. Tho third dny we
sighted something. At first sight and
for long time as we approached it
we took it for the projecting summit
of n coral reef, formed like a Eattened
pyramid and covering many yards of
the oceans surface. In height it rose,
as it seemed to me, almost to the eleva-
ton of our lnainInast. We would have
sailed by it without comment or fur
Their thought, but just as our course
brought about a hundred feet aport
mass. It began to unfold, and to our
horror we saw the frightful head of
the sea serpent rear itself and shoot
upward until the fierce eyes of the
monster glared down at us from a tre-
mendous height. Before tho captain
could shout an order the serpent sank
like falling meteor into the sea, and
with a roaring hiss rushed toward our
vessel, its lnonstrous head held high
above the water, its jaws apart like the
opening to some great cavern, its eyes
glaring fire.
Ito your axes!' shouted the captain.
Every man of us seized an AK. The
sea monster quickly covered the space
between where he lay and our vessel,
and thrust his horrible head over the
gunwale. AS he did so he stopped as il
brought up by something that held him
back. And something did. Away out
on the water, where his middle was,
his body doomed up like awater-logged
wreck. But we had no time to wonder
x3t hQf RI Sfrifx
the awful serpent the first blow. My
AK sank to the helve in his back. Quick
ly every sailor followed with telling
blows, until we hacked and hewed the
monster into his death throes. He
died hard. His struggles shook the
ship until she groaned and creaked.
But we killed him. 1 do not hesitate
to say, though, that if itnhad not been
for that great hullsing thing that held
him handicapped amidships, SO to
speak, the chances are that he would
never have fallen victim to our fury.
Rather, think, we would have been
engulfed, perhaps ship and all, by tho
terrible monster. After we had slain
the serpent boat was manned and
rowed out to see what the looming
mass was that had indirectly encom-
passed his destruction. We chopped
the floating carcass Of the dead sea
monster open. Lol there was the tre-
mendous whale the captain had de-
scribed to us as having been the victim
of that deadly affray three days before!
Then, to be sure, there was great re-