Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-06-18

two huge greensh eyes. bigger than dinner
plates, gogging greedily at him the gunwae of
his boata warning that presently frightfu snake
like arm provided with powerful suckers for clinging
will be thrown about him, dragging him overheard
and into the depths to be devoured at leisure.
Most appropriate it will be at this point to tell
the story o. the lark Pauline returning home from
the Indian seas in 1875. Her mate and crew made
oath before magistrate in police court of Liver
pool to the effect that on July 8 of that year. in
latitude five degrees and thirteen minutes south and
longitude thirty-fve degrees west, they had OBJ
served three large sperm whales one of which was
wrapped around the body by two turns of what
appeared to be a huge serpent. The head and tail
of the serpent seemed to have length beyond the
coils of about thirty feet. 1t whirled the whale
round and round for fifteen minutes and then
suddenly dragged the unfortunate cetacean head
first to the bottom. .
Now, If such testimony, given by number of
individuals who signed their names to the affidavit
was offered in behalf of anything else than sea-
serpent, 1t would be accepted pretty generally as
worthy of belief 1t seems altogether probable that
the mariners at least thought that they were telling
the truth, and it must be admitted that sailor
knows whale when he one. As for the party
of the other part the description one would think
could apply only to a calamary which, if this theory
be correct, must have been engaged in fight with
the cetacean The squd must have been a huge
one but no larger necessarily than the specimen
to which belonged fragment of a tentac1e picked
up the northwest by DIR. Dali of the Smith
sonlan Institution From the size of the cup-like
suckers on the fragment it reckoned that the
entire tentacle hardly could have been less than
eighty feet in length
Like the common squid whose skeleton furnishes
a substance Tor canary-birds to sharpen their bills
upon the huge calamary swims backward dragging
its tentacles behind accomplishing 1ocomotion by
forcing water out through sort of sphon and
sometimes erecting its tail provided with horizontal
rudder-like f1anges) considerable distance above
the surface of the sea. If seen under such cir
cumstances, the tail almost inevitably would be
mistaken for head while the enormously long
arms trailing sinuousy behind would appear to
represent snaky tail. Make allowance for little
imagination on the part of the observer, and you
have the sea-serpent, to all intents and purposes
complete.
Here then we have entirely possible sea-
serpent approximately equal in size to the monster
of which We have heard much corresponding in
most important respects to the creature reported
by so many fairly reliable witnesses, and which
has the great advantage of being animal actually
known to exist at the present time. The mere fact
that it IS mousk instead of reptile and that its
head may have been mistaken for its tail does not
initiate against its acceptability as a realization
fact of the quasi fabulous haunter of the yster
depths of the ocean 1t already has been proved
beyond doubt that the giant squd is the original
of the tabled kraken, famed in Norwegian legends
of which more marvellous stories told than
related in regard to the sea-serpent
The most authentic evidence record in behalf