422 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



him from the descriptions given by the captain and crew 

 of the Pauline. "The whale," he said, "should have been 

 placed deeper in the water, but he would then have been 

 unable to depict so clearly the manner in which the animal 

 was attacked." He adds that, " Captain Drevar is a singularly 

 able and observant man, and those of the crew and officers 

 with whom he conversed were singularly intelligent ; nor did 

 any of their descriptions vary from one another in the least : 

 there were no discrepancies." The event took place whilst 

 their vessel was on her way from Shields to Zanzibar, with 

 a cargo of coals, for the use of H.M.S. London, then the 

 guardship on that station. 



It is impossible to doubt for a moment the genuineness 

 of the statement made by Captain Drevar and his crew, or 

 their honest desire to describe faithfully that which they 

 believed they had seen ; but the height to which the snake is 

 said to have upreared itself is evidently greatly exaggerated ; 

 for it is impossible that any serpent could " elevate its body 

 some sixty feet perpendicularly in the air" ^nearly one- 

 third of the height of the Monument of the Great Fire of 

 London. I have no desire to force this narrative of the 

 master and crew of the Pauline into conformity with any 

 preconceived idea. They may have seen a veritable sea 

 serpent ; or, as has been suggested, they may have wit- 

 nessed the amours of two whales, and have seen the great 

 creatures rolling over and over that they might breathe 

 alternately by the blow-hole of each coming to the surface 

 of the water ; or more probably, the supposed coils of the 

 snake may have been the arms of a great calamary, cast 

 over and around the huge cetacean. The other two appear- 

 ances ist, the animal seen shooting itself along the surface 

 with head and neck raised " (p. 402), and second, the eleva- 

 tion of the body to a considerable height, as in Egede's sea 



