The Ocala Evening Star

The old whaler, who has not a warehouse full of the sea to relate, does not exist; he never lived to be old, and has long since been forgotten. The elder Mr. Human is an old whaler, in point of experience if not in years. "Did I ever see a sea serpent?" He repeated the question the other day, and answered: "Why, yes, once: I will tell you about it.

"I was second mate on a brig out of Nantucket. We had been cruising for the better part of a year, and had set our course homeward. We ran into a great blow that howled for days. We couldn't see the sun to take observations, but at the end of about nine days we calculated by dead reckoning that we were in the Indian sea.

Still the blow kept up in all its fury and we had about given up hope. On the morning of the tenth day, however, with the wind still blowing great gusts and the waves running mountain high the lookout suddenly called loudly. "Land ho!"

Off the port bow about two leagues there loomed up what appeared to be a long narrow island. We put the helm up and steered for it, in the hope of finding a harbor or at least a breakwater that would protect us from the suffering of the heavy seas.

"But upon a near approach to the mass we found, to our horror, that it wasn't an island at all: The thing was alive: It had evidently espied us about the same time our lookout picked it up, and it was coming toward us.

Well, gentlemen, to cut a long story short, it proved to be a monstrous sea serpent. The reptile began to swim in a circle around the brig. After about four times circling us, it took its tail in its mouth, thus hemming us in a great lagoon which I should judge to be not less than half a mile across at its narrowest part. The monster's enormous sides were so high that we were almost immediately in perfectly smooth water- just as if we had been lying in a protected harbor. The waves couldn't reach over the sea-serpent's back.

For two whole days we remained in this queerly improvised harbor of refuge, while the storm raged meanwhile making needed repairs on sails and running gear. Then the wind died down the sun came out, and we could see by means of our glasses that the seas outside our harbor had spent their fury.

"Then we began to ask ourselves would the sea-serpent turn loose its tail and permit us to depart in peace" We waited two days to see if the question would answer itself. But the creature showed no disposition to assume its normal attitude. Whereupon the skipper ordered the longboat put overboard and I was assigned to the task of making an investigation.

To my astonishment I found the creature to be fast asleep! Nor was that any means of determining with any degree of accuracy how long it would sleep, or what it would most likely do when it waked up. So enormous was its size that it might sleep six months and then it might awaken hungry enough to swallow ship and crew at one gulp.

Frightened by this situation, we knew that something must be done and done without delay, as our provisions were running low. It was then that the skipper's wonderful resourcefulness came into play. We had in hold a barrel of chloroform.

He ordered us to take four dozen big kettles of it and apply it where it would do the most good.

All we did. In about six hours we had the sea-serpent completely under the influence of chloroform. Then we took axes and picks and shovels and cut a channel through its back wide and deep enough to permit us to sail away to safety.

That was the first and last sea serpent I ever saw.

Tug, the whale after that says sea-serpent again.