SIR WALTER SCOTT 159 



others skilled in legendary lore, such wonders as 

 modern navigators reject with disdain. An the 

 quiet moonlight bay, where the waves came rip- 

 pling to the shore, upon a bed of smooth sand 

 intermingled with shells, the mermaid was still 

 seen to glide along the waters by moonlight and, 

 mingling her voice with the sighing breeze, was 

 often heard to sing of subterranean wonders, or to 

 chant prophecies of future events. The kraken, 

 the hugest of living things, was still supposed to 

 cumber the recesses of the Northern Ocean ; and 

 often, when some fog-bank covered the sea at a 

 distance, the eye of the experienced boatman saw 

 the horns of the monstrous leviathan walking and 

 waving amidst the wreaths of mist, and bore away 

 with all press of oar and sail, lest the sudden 

 suction, occasioned by the sinking of the mon- 

 strous mass to the bottom, should drag within the 

 grasp of its multifarious feelers his own frail skiff. 

 The sea-snake was also known, which, arising out 

 of the depths of ocean, stretches to the skies his 

 enormous neck, covered with a mane like that of a 

 war-horse, and, with his broad glittering eyes raised 

 masthead high, looks out, as it seems, for plunder 

 or for victims. 



Str IValier Scott. 



