The Hot Swamp | Page 7

contempt.
The turn of thought silenced both speakers for a time; and when
Captain Arkal turned to resume the conversation, he found that his
friend was sound asleep.
CHAPTER THREE.
ON THE VOYAGE.
Weather has always been, and, we suppose, always will be, capricious.
Its uncertainty of character--in the Levant, as in the Atlantic, in days of
old as now, was always the same--smiling to-day; frowning to-morrow;
playful as a lamb one day; raging like a lion the next.
After the rough handling experienced by the Penelope at the beginning

of her voyage, rude Boreas kindly retired, and spicy breezes from
Africa rippled the sea with just sufficient force to intensify its heavenly
blue, and fill out the great square-sail so that there was no occasion to
ply the oars. One dark, starlight but moonless night, a time of quiet talk
prevailed from stem to stern of the vessel as the grizzled mariners spun
long yarns of their prowess and experiences on the deep, for the benefit
of awe-stricken and youthful shipmates whose careers were only
commencing.
"You've heard, no doubt, of the great sea-serpent?" observed little
Maikar, who had speedily recovered from the flattening to which
Bladud had subjected him, and was busy enlivening a knot of young
fellows in the bow of the ship.
"Of course we have!" cried one; "father used to tell me about it when I
was but a small boy. He never saw it himself, though he had been to the
Tin Isles and Albion more than once; but he said he had met with men
who had spoken with shipmates who had heard of it from men who had
seen it only a few days before, and who described it exactly."
"Ah!" remarked another, "but I have met a man who had seen it himself
on his first voyage, when he was quite a youth; and he said it had a
bull's head and horns, with a dreadful long body all over scales, and
something like an ass's tail at the end."
"Pooh!--nonsense!" exclaimed little Maikar, twirling his thumbs, for
smoking had not been introduced into the world at that period--and
thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for
leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better--at least we are led to infer
so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a
vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with
smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the
taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an
unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of
History," we think, almost proves our point. "Nonsense!" repeated little
Maikar. "The youth of the man who told you about the serpent accounts
for his wild description, for youth is prone to strange imaginings and--"

"It seems to me," interrupted a grave man, who twirled his thumbs in
that slow, deliberate way in which a contemplative man smokes--"it
seems to me that there's no more truth about the great sea-serpent than
there is about the golden fleece. I don't believe in either of them."
"Don't you? Well, all I can say is," returned the little man, gazing
fixedly in the grave comrade's face, "that I saw the great sea-serpent
with my own eyes!"
"No! did you?" exclaimed the group, drawing their heads closer
together with looks of expectancy.
"Ay, that did I, mates; but you mustn't expect wild descriptions about
monsters with bulls' horns and asses' tails from me. I like truth, and the
truth is, that the brute was so far away at the time we saw it, that not a
man of us could tell exactly what it was like, and when we tried the
description, we were all so different, that we gave it up; but we were all
agreed on this point, that it certainly was the serpent."
The listeners seemed rather disappointed at this meagre account and
sudden conclusion of what had bidden fair to become a stirring tale of
the sea; but Maikar re-aroused their expectations by stating his firm
belief that it was all nonsense about there being only one sea-serpent.
"Why, how could there be only one?" he demanded, ceasing to twirl, in
order that he might clench his fist and smite his knee with emphasis.
"Haven't you got a grandfather?" he asked, turning suddenly to the
grave man.
"Certainly, I've got two of them if you come to that," he answered,
taken rather aback by the brusque and apparently irrelevant nature of
the question.
"Just so--two of them," repeated the little man, "and don't you think it
likely that the sea serpent must have had two grandfathers also?"
"Undoubtedly--and two grandmothers as well. Perhaps he's got them
yet," replied the grave man with a contemplative