174 Sea'Serpents 



Drevar stated that, when in lat. 13° S., long. 35° W., 

 they observed three very large sperm whales (I may 

 here note, in passing, that I have never yet met with 

 a seaman other than a whaleman who knew a sperm 

 whale when he saw it, or could distinguish between 

 any one whale and another of a different species), 

 and one of them was gripped round the body with two 

 turns, by what appeared to be a huge serpent. Its 

 back was of a darkish brown, and its belly white, 

 with an immense head and mouth, the latter always 

 open ; the head and tail had a length beyond the 

 coils of about thirty feet ; its girth was about eight 

 or nine feet. Using its extremities as levers, the serpent 

 whirled its victim round and round for about fifteen 

 minutes, and then suddenly dragged the whale down 

 to the bottom, head first. The other two whales, 

 after attempting to release their companion, swam 

 away upon its descent, exhibiting signs of the greatest 

 terror. 



On July 13 this or another sea-serpent was again 

 seen, about two hundred yards off the stern of the 

 vessel, shooting itself along the surface, forty feet 

 of its body being out of the water at a time. Again 

 on the same day it was seen once more with its body 

 standing quite perpendicularly out of the water to a 

 height of sixty feet. This time it seemed determined 

 to attack the vessel, and the crew and officers armed 

 themselves with axes for self-defence. In another 

 version of the same story he, the captain, speaks of 

 the serpent ' looking angrily ' at the ship. 



Now, eight or nine years ago I wrote a paper for 

 Nature on ' the Sperm Whale and its Food,' in the 

 course of which I described a spectacle I witnessed 

 of a huge cachalot devouring a very large cuttle-fish 

 or squid upon the sea-surface in the Straits of Malacca. 



