THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



ship from before the beam. The circumstance was 

 immediately reported by him to the officer of the 

 watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom 

 and Mr. William Barrett, the master, I was at the 

 time walking the quarter-deck. The ship's com- 

 pany were at supper. 



"On our attention being called to the object, it 

 was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with 

 head and shoulders kept about four feet con- 

 stantly above the surface of the sea, and, as 

 nearly as we could approximate by comparing it 

 with the length of what our maintopsail-yard 

 would shew in the water, there was at the very 

 least sixty feet of the animal a, fleur (Yenu* no 

 portion of which was, to our perception, used in 

 propelling it through the water, either by vertical 

 or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but 

 so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a 

 man of my acquaintance, I should easily have 

 recognised his features with the naked eye ; and it 

 did not, either in approaching the ship or after it 

 had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest 

 degree from its course to the S. W., which it held 

 on at the pace of from twelve to fifteen miles per 

 hour, apparently on some determined purpose. 



"The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen 

 or sixteen inches behind the head, which was, 

 without any doubt, that of a snake ; and it was 

 never, during the twenty minutes that it con- 

 tinued in sight of our glasses, once below the sur- 

 face of the water ; its colour a dark brown, with 

 yellowish white about the throat. It had no fins, 

 but something like the mane of a horse, or rather 

 a bunch of sea- weed, washed about its back. It 



* "At the surface of the water." What need there was to 

 express this by a French phrase in an English report, is not ob- 

 vious. 



297 



