STRANGE SEA MONSTERS. 95 



yards from the Pauline, " shooting itself along the 

 surface head and neck being out of the water several 

 feet." " A few moments later it was seen elevated 

 some sixty feet perpendicularly in the air/' and then, 

 having probably satisfied itself that the ship was 

 neither its natural enemy nor appropriate food, the 

 creature retired. The captain's idea would', indeed, 

 seem to be that the serpent mistook the ship for 

 another serpent of its own kind ; but this would seem 

 about as likely as that a horse should mistake a 

 traction-engine for a filly. 



Singularly enough we receive almost simultaneously 

 with this curious story another, authenticated in a simi- 

 lar way, and relating to an animal equally marvellous,, 

 though of a different kind. Soon after the British 

 steam- ship Nestor anchored at Shanghai, in October, 

 1878, John K. Webster, the captain, and James 

 Anderson, the ship's surgeon, appeared before Mr. 

 Donald Spence, Acting Law Secretary to the British 

 Supreme Court, and made affidavit to the following 

 effect: "On September 11, at 10.30 a.m., fifteen 

 miles north-west of North Sand Lighthouse, in the 

 Malacca Straits, the weather being fine and the sea 

 smooth, the captain saw an object which had been 

 pointed out by the third officer as ' a shoal ! ' Sur- 

 prised at finding a shoal in such a well-known track, 

 I watched the object, and found that it was in motion, 

 keeping up the same speed with the ship, and retain- 

 ing about the same distance as first seen. The 

 shape of the creature I would compare to that of a 



