326 THE GEEAT UNKNOWN. 



meiit I imagine the creature was that Mr Sartoris saw 

 raj)idly approaching the Dcedalus from before the beam, 

 scanning, probably, its capabilities as a resting place, as it 

 paddled its long stiff body past the ship. In so doing, it 

 would raise a head of the form and colour described and 

 delineated by Captain M'Quhse, supported on a neck also 

 of the diameter given ; the thick neck passing into an 

 inflexible trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper 

 part of which would give rise to the idea, especially if the 

 species were the Plioca leonina, explained by the similes 

 above cited. The organs of locomotion would be out of 

 sight. The pectoral fins being set on very low down, as 

 in my sketch, the chief impelling force would be the 

 action of the deeper immersed terminal fins and tail, 

 which would create a long eddy, readily mistakeable, by 

 one looking at the strange j^henomenon with a sea-serpent 

 in his mind's-eye, for an indefinite prolongation of 

 the body. 



" It is very probable, that not one on board the Dce- 

 dalus ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming 

 in the open ocean. Entering unexpectedly from that 

 vast and commonly blank desert of waters, it would be a 

 strange and exciting spectacle, and might well be inter- 

 preted as a marvel ; but the creative powers of the human 

 mind appear to be really very limited, and, on all the 

 occasions where the true source of the 'great unknown' 

 has been detected — whether it has proved to be a file of 

 sportive porpoises, or a pair of gigantic sharks — old 

 Pontoppidan's sea-serpent with the mane has uniformly 



