226 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



But all the evidence heretofore obtained respecting the 

 sea-serpent, although regarded by many naturalists, Gosse, 

 Newman, Wilson, and others, as demonstrating the existence 

 of some as yet unclassified monster of the deep, seems alto- 

 gether indecisive by comparison with that which has recently 

 been given by the captain, mates, and crew of the ship 

 Pauline. In this case, assuredly, we have not to deal with 

 a mass of sea-weed, the floating trunk of a tree, a sea-elephant 

 hastening to his home amid the icebergs, or with any of the 

 other more or less ingenious explanations of observations 

 previously made. We have either the case of an actual 

 living animal, monstrous, fierce, and carnivorous, or else 

 the five men who deposed on oath to the stated facts devised 

 the story between them, and wilfully perjured themselves for 

 no conceivable purpose that, too, not as men have been 

 known to perjure themselves under the belief that none 

 could know of their infamy, but with the certainty on the 

 part of each that four others (any one of whom might one 

 day shame him and the rest by confessing) knew the real 

 facts of the case. 



The story of the Pauline sea-serpent ran simply as follows, 

 as attested at the Liverpool police-court : " We, the under- 

 signed, captain, officers, and crew of the bark Pauline, of 

 London, do solemnly and sincerely declare, that on July 8, 

 1875, in latitude 5 13' S., longitude 35 W., we observed 

 three large sperm whales, and one of them was gripped 

 round the body with two turns of what appeared to be a huge 

 serpent. The head and tail appeared to have a length 

 beyond the coils of about 30 feet, and its girth 8 or 9 feet 

 The serpent whirled its victim round and round for about 

 fifteen minutes, and then suddenly dragged the whale to the 

 bottom, head first. George Drevat, master; Horatio 

 Thompson, chief mate ; John H. Landells, second mate ; 

 William Lewarn, steward ; Owen Baker, A.B. Again on the 

 1 3th July a similar serpent was seen about 200 yards off, 

 shooting itself along the surface, head and neck being out of 

 the water several feet. This was seen only by the captain 



