Tom Finch's Monkey Part 7

"The captain and first lieutenant were flabbergasted, I could see; but Captain Manter was as brave an officer as ever stepped, and he pulled himself together in a minute, as the fog, which had only lifted for a minute, came down again shutting out everything from view so that we could not see a yard from the side. 'Don't be alarmed, my men,' he sings out in his cheery voice, so that every hand could hear him, 'it's only a waterspout that is magnified by the fog; and as it gets nearer we'll give it the starboard broadside to clear it up and burst it.'

"'Ay! ay!' sez the men with a cheer, while the smell grew more awful and the snorting gus.h.i.+ng sound we had heard before so loud that it was quite deafening, just immediately after the captain spoke, when it had stopped awhile.

"As for poor Gil, he had never lost the grip of my arm since we sighted the reptile, although he had the lanyard of his gun in his right hand all the same.

"'Fire!' sez the captain; and, in a moment, the whole starboard broadside was fired off, point blank across the water, in a line with the deck, as Captain Manter had ordered us to depress the guns, the old _Amphitrite_ rocking to her keel with the explosion.

"Well, sir, as true as I'm standing here a-talking to you, at the very instant the guns belched out their fire and smoke, and the cannon-b.a.l.l.s with which they were loaded, there was a most treemenjus roar and a dash of water alongside the s.h.i.+p, and the waves came over us as if we were on a lee sh.o.r.e; and then, as the men stood appalled at the things going on around them, which was what no mortal ever seed before, Gil clasped my arm more tightly, loosening his right hand from the lanyard of the gun which he had now fired, and shrieked out, 'There! there!'

"Master Charles, it were awful! A long heavy body seemed to be reared up high in the air right athwart the vessel, and plunged far away in the sea to leeward; and, as the body pa.s.sed over our heads, I looked up with Gil, and saw the fearful fiery eyes of the biggest snake that ever crawled on the earth, though this was flying in the air, and round his hideous head, that had a long beak like a bird, was a curious fringe or frill all yellowish green, just like what a lizard puffs out under his throat when in a rage. I could see no more, for the thing was over us and gone a mile or more to leeward in a wink of the eye, the fog drifting after it and hiding it from sight. Besides which, I was occupied with Gil, who had sank down on the deck in a dead swoon.

"Whatever it was, the thing carried away our main topmast with the yards, and everything clean from the caps as if it had been shot away, and there wasn't a trace of them floating in the sea around, as we could see.

"'A close thing that!' said the captain, after the shock was over, speaking to the lieutenant, although all hands could hear him, for it was as still as possible now. 'A close thing, Mr Freemantle. I've known a waterspout do even more damage than this; so let us be thankful!'

"And then all hands were piped to clear the wreck, and make the s.h.i.+p snug; for we had some bad weather afterwards, and had to put into Sierra Leone to refit.

"Gil was in a swoon for a long time after; and then he took the fever bad, and only recovered by the skin of his teeth; but he never forgot what he had seen, nor I either, nor any of the hands, though we never talked about it. We knew we had seen something unearthly; even the captain and Lieutenant Freemantle, though they put down the damage to a waterspout for fear of alarming the men, knew differently, as we did.

We had seen the great sea sarpint, if anybody had, every man-jack of us aboard! It was a warning, too, as poor Gil Saul had declared; for, strange to say, except himself and me, not a soul as was on board the _Amphitrite_ when the reptile overhauled us, lived to see Old England again. The bones of all the others were left to bleach on the burning sands of the east coast of Africa, which has killed ten thousand more of our own countrymen with its deadly climate than we have saved slaves from slavery!"

"But, Jim," said I, as the old sailor paused at the end of his yarn.

"Do you think it was really the sea serpent? Might it not have been a waterspout, or a bit of floating wreck, which you saw in the fog?"

Jim Newman got grumpy at once, at the bare insinuation of such a thing.

"Waterspouts and bits of wreck," said he sarcastically, "generally travel at the rate of twenty miles an hour when there is no wind to move them along, and a dead calm, don't they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck smell like polecats when you're a hundred miles from land, don't they?

Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains going through a tunnel, don't they?"

I was silenced by Jim's sarcasm, and humbly begged his pardon for doubting the veracity of his eyesight.

"Besides, Master Charles," he urged, when he had once more been restored to his usual equanimity; "besides, you must remember that nearly in the same parts, and about the same time--in the beginning of the month of August, 1848--the sea sarpint, as people who have never seen it are so fond of joking of, was seen by the captain and crew of HMS _Daedalus_ and the event was put down in the s.h.i.+p's log, and reported officially to the Admiralty. I suppose you won't go for to doubt the statement which was made by a captain in the navy, a gentleman, and a man of honour, and supported by the evidence of the lieutenant of the watch, the master, a mids.h.i.+pman, the quartermaster, boatswain's mate, and the man at the wheel--the rest of the s.h.i.+p's company being below at the time?"

"No, Jim," said I, "that's straight enough."

"We was in lat.i.tude 5 degrees 30 minutes north, and longitude about 3 degrees east," continued the old sailor, "when we saw it on the 1st of August, 1848, and they in lat.i.tude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, and longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, when they saw it on the 6th of the same month; so the curious reptile--for reptile he was--must have put the steam on when he left us!"

"Stirred up, probably, by your starboard broadside?" said I.

"Jest so," went on Jim. "But, he steered just in the direction to meet them when he went off from us, keeping a southward and eastward course; and I daresay, if he liked, he could have made a hundred knots an hour as easy as we could sail ten on a bowline with a stiff breeze."

"And so you really have seen the great sea serpent?" said I, when the old man-of-war's man had s.h.i.+fted his quid once more, thus implying that he had finished.

"Not a doubt of it, sir; and by the same token he was as long as from here to the Spit Buoy, and as broad as one of them circular forts out there."

"That's a very good yarn, Jim," said I; "but do you mean to say that you saw the monster with your own eyes, Jim, as well as all the rest of you?"

"I saw him, I tell you, Master Charles, as plain as I see you now; and as true as I am standing by your side the sarpint jumped right over the _Amphitrite_ when Gil Saul and I was a-looking up, and carried away our maintopmast and everything belonging to it!"

"Well, it must have been wonderful, Jim," said I.

"Ay, ay, sir," said he, "but you'd ha' thought it a precious sight more wonderful if you had chanced to see it, like me!"

I may add, that, shortly afterwards, I really took the trouble to overhaul a pile of the local papers to see whether Jim's account of the report made by the captain of the _Daedalus_ to the Lords of the Admiralty was substantially true; and, strange to say, I discovered amongst the numbers of the _Hamps.h.i.+re Telegraph_ for the year 1848, the following copy of a letter forwarded by Captain McQubae to the admiral in command at Devonport dockyard at the date mentioned:--

"Her Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Daedalus_

"Hamoaze, October 11th, 1848.

"Sir,--In reply to your letter of this day's date, requiring information as to the truth of a statement published in the _Globe_ newspaper, of a sea serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been seen from her Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Daedalus_, under my command, on her pa.s.sage from the East Indies, I have the honour to acquaint you, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at five o'clock, PM, on the 6th of August last, in lat.i.tude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, and longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the North West, with a long ocean swell from the South West, the s.h.i.+p on the port tack heading North East by North, something very unusual was seen by Mr Sartons, mids.h.i.+pman, rapidly approaching the s.h.i.+p from before the beam. The circ.u.mstance 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 s.h.i.+p's company 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 constantly above the surface of the sea, and as nearly as we could approximate, by comparing it with the length of what our main-topsail- yard would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet of the animal _a fleur d'eau_, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It pa.s.sed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; and it did not, either in approaching the s.h.i.+p or after it had pa.s.sed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the South West, 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 never, during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our gla.s.ses once below the surface 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 was seen by the quartermaster, the boatswain's mate, and the man at the wheel, in addition to myself and officers above- mentioned.

"I am having a drawing of the serpent made from a sketch taken immediately after it was seen, which I hope to have ready for transmission to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty by to-morrow's posts.

"I have, etcetera,

"Peter McQubae, Captain.

"To Admiral Sir WH Gage, GCH, Devonport."

Consequently, having this testimony, which was amply verified by the other witnesses at the time, I see no reason to doubt the truth of Jim Newman's yarn about THE GREAT SEA SERPENT!

CHAPTER FIVE.

"OUR SCRATCH ELEVEN."

This all happened a year or two before I went to sea, and so doesn't come under the ordinary designation of a "yarn," which, I take it, should only be about the doings of seafaring men and those who have to toil over the ocean for a living; still, as it concerns myself, I give it in pretty nearly the exact words I told it the other day to a party of youngsters who had just come in from cricketing and asked me for a story.

I never played in such a match in my life before or since, I began; but, there, I had better commence at the right end, and then you'll be able to judge for yourselves.

Charley Bates, of course, was dead against it from the first.

"I tell you it's all nonsense," he said, when we mooted the subject to him. "How on earth can we get up a decent eleven to play chaps like those, who have been touring it all over the country, and licking professionals even on their own ground? It's impossible, and a downright absurdity. We can't do it."

"But, Charley," suggested Sidney Grant, a tall, fair-haired fellow, and our best bat--he could swipe away at leg b.a.l.l.s; and as for straight drives, well, he'd send 'em over a bowler's head, just out of his reach, and right to the boundary wall, at such a rate, like an express train going through the air, that they defied stopping. "But, Charley," he suggested, "we've got some good ones left of our team, and I daresay we can pick up some fresh hands from amongst the visitors to make up a fair scratch lot."

"It would be a scratch lot," sneered Charley--"a lot that would be scratched out with duck's eggs, and make us the laughing-stock of the place."

"Oh, that's all nonsense!" Sidney said, decisively.

Besides being our best bat, he was the captain of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club, which, as it was far into the month of August, had got somewhat dispersed through some of the team having gone off on those cheap excursions to London, to the Continent, and elsewhere, that are rife at most of the seaside places on the south coast during the season.

But now that the great travelling team of the "Piccadilly Inimitables"

purposed paying a pa.s.sing visit to our rural shades, it of course behoved the Little Peddlington Cricket Club to challenge the celebrated amateurs to a match, albeit we were so woefully weak from the absence of many of our best members, or else be for ever disgraced amongst the patrons of the n.o.ble game.

It was this very point we were debating now, our captain having collected the remnants of the club together in solemn caucus, to deliberate on the situation and see what was to be done.