"Was you ever up the Niger, sir?"
"Why, of course not, Jim! you know that I've never been on the African
station, or any other for that matter. But why do you ask the
question?"
"Don't know 'xactly, sir. P'raps that blessed sea-fog reminds me of it,
somehow or other--though there's little likeness, as far as that goes,
between the west coast and Portsmouth, is there, sir?"
"I don't suppose there is," I said; "but what puts the Niger, of all
places in the world, in your head at the present moment?"
"Ah, that'd tell a tale, sir," he answered, cocking his left eye in a
knowing manner, and giving the quid in his mouth a turn. "Ah, that'd
tell a tale, sir!"
Jim Newman, an old man-of-war's man--now retired from the navy, and who
eked out his pension by letting boats for hire to summer visitors--was
leaning against an old coal barge that formed his "office," drawn up
high and dry on the beach, midway between Southsea Castle and Portsmouth
Harbour, and gazing out steadily across the channel of the Solent, to
the Isle of Wight beyond. He and I were old friends of long standing,
and I was never so happy as when I could persuade him--albeit it did not
need much persuasion--to open the storehouse of his memory, and spin a
yarn about his old experiences afloat in the whilom wooden walls of
England, when crack frigates were the rage instead of screw steamers
with armour-plates. We had been talking of all sorts of service
gossip--the war, the weather, what not--when he suddenly asked me the
question about the great African river that has given poor Sambo "a
local habitation and a name."
Although the gushing tears of April had hardly washed away the traces of
the wild March winds, the weather had suddenly become almost tropical in
its heat. There was not the slightest breath of air stirring, and the
sea lay lazily asleep, only throbbing now and then with a faint
spasmodic motion, which barely stirred the shingle on the shore, much
less plashed on the beach; while a thick, heavy white mist was steadily
creeping up from the sea, shutting out, first the island, and then the
roadstead at Spithead from view, and overlapping the whole landscape in
thick woolly folds, moist yet warm. Jim had said that the sea-fog,
coming as it did, was a sign of heat, and that we should have a regular
old-fashioned hot summer, unlike those of recent years.
"Ah, sir," he repeated, "I could tell a tale about that deadly Niger
river, and the Gaboon, and the whole treacherous coast, if I liked, from
Lagos down to the Congo--ay, I could! It was that 'ere sea-fog that put
Afriker into my head, Master Charles; I know that blessed white mist, a-
rising up like a curtain, well, I do! The `white man's shroud,' the
niggers used to call it--and many a poor beggar it has sarved to shroud,
too, in that killing climate, confound it!"
"Well, Jim, tell us about the Niger to begin with," said I, so as to
bring him up to the scratch without delay; for, when Jim once got on the
moralising or sentimental tack, he generally ended by getting angry with
everybody and everything around him; and when he got angry, there was an
end to his stories for that day at least.
"All right, your honour," said the old fellow, calming down at once into
his usual serenity again, and giving his quid another shift as he braced
himself well up against the old barge, on the half-deck of which I was
seated with my legs dangling down--"All right, your honour! If it's a
yarn you're after, why I had best weigh anchor at once and make an
offing, or else we shan't be able to see a handspike afore us!"
"Heave ahead, Jim!" said I impatiently; "you are as long as a three-
decker in getting under way!"
With this encouragement, he cleared his throat with his customary
hoarse, choking sort of cough, like an old raven, and commenced his
narrative without any further demur.
"It's more'n twenty years now since I left the service--ay, thirty years
would be more like it; and almost my very last cruise was on the West
African station. I had four years of it, and I recollect it well; for,
before I left the blessed, murdering coast, with its poisonous lagoons
covered with thick green slime, and sickly smells, and burning sands, I
seed a sight there that I shall never forget as long as I live, and
which would make me recklect Afrikey well enough if nothing else would!"
"That's right, Jim, fire away!" said I, settling myself comfortably on
my seat to enjoy the yarn. "What was it that you saw?"
"Steady! Let her go easy, your honour; I'm a-coming to that soon
enough. It was in the old _Amphitrite_ I was at the time--she's broken-
up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing!--and we was a-lying
in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the
day before off Whydah. She was a Brazilian schooner with nearly five
hundred wretched creatures on board, so closely packed that you could
not find space enough to put your foot fairly on her deck in any place.
The slaves had only been a night on board her; but the stench was so
awful, from so many unfortunate niggers being squeezed so tightly
together like herrings in a barrel, and under a hot sun too, that we
were longing to send the schooner away to Sierra Leone, and get rid of
the horrid smell, which was worse than the swamps ashore! Well, I was
in the morning watch after we had towed in the slaver to the Bights,
having carried away her foremast with a round shot in making her bring
to, and was just going forward to turn in as the next watch came on
deck, when who should hail me but my mate, Gil Saul, coming in from the
bowsprit, where he had been on the look-out--it was him as was my
pardner here when I first started as a shore hand in letting out boats,
but he lost the number of his mess long ago like our old ship the
_Amphitrite_.
"As he came up to me his face was as white as your shirt, and he was
trembling all over as if he was going to have a fit of the fever and
ague.
"`Lor', Gil Saul,' sez I, `what's come over you, mate? are you going on
the sick list, or what?'
"`Hush, Jim,' sez he, quite terror-stricken. `Don't speak like that;
I've seen a ghost, and I knows I shall be a dead man afore the day's
out!'
"With that I burst into a larf.
"`Bless your eyes, Gil,' sez I, `tell that to the marines, my bo'! you
can't get over me on that tack. You won't find any respectable ghosts
leaving dear old England for the sake of this dirty, sweltering west
coast, which no Christian would come to from choice, let alone a ghost!'
"`But, Jim,' he sez, leaning his hand on my arm to detain me as I was
going down below, `this wasn't a h'English ghost as I sees just now. It
was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see. A long, big,
black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette;
with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights.
It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning,
and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship. I've had a warning,
old shipmate, and I'll be a dead man before to-morrow morning, I know!'
"The poor chap shook with fright as he spoke, though he was as brave a
man as we had aboard; so I knew that he had been drinking and was in a
state of delirium tremendibus, or else he was sickening for the African
fever, which those who once have never forget. I therefore tried to
pacify him and explain away his fancy.
"`That's a good un, Gil Saul,' I sez. `Don't you let none of the other
hands hear what you've told me, that you've seen the great sea sarpint,
or you'll never get the end of it.'
"Gil got angry at this, forgetting his fright in his passion at my
doubting his word like.
"`But it was the sea sarpint, I tells you, or its own brother if it
wasn't. Didn't I see it with my own eyes, and I was as wide awake as
you are, and not caulking?'
"`The sea sarpint!' I repeated scornfully, laughing again in a way that
made Gil wild. `Who ever heard tell of such a thing, except in a Yankee
yarn?'
"`And why shouldn't there be a big snake in the sea the same as there
are big snakes on land like the Bow constreetar, as is read of in books
of history, Jim Newman? Some folks are so cocksure, that they won't
believe nothing but what they sees for themselves. I wonder who at
home, now, would credit that there are some monkeys here in Afrikey that
are bigger than a man and walk upright; and you yourself, Jim, have told
me that when you were in Australy you seed rabbits that were more than
ten foot high when they stood on their hind-legs, and that could jump a
hundred yards at one leap.'
"`So I have, Gil Saul,' sez I, a bit nettled at what he said, and the
way he said it, `and what I says I stick to. I have seen at Port Philip
kangaroos, which are just like big rabbits with upright ears, as big as
I've said; and I've seen 'em, too, jump more than twice the distance any
horse could.'
"`And why then,' sez he, argumentifying on to me like a shot, `and why
then shouldn't there be such a thing as the sea sarpint?'
"This flummuxed me a bit, for I couldn't find an answer handy, so I axed
him another question to get out of my quandary.
"`But why, Gil, did you say you had seed a ghost, when it was a
sarpint?'
"This time _he_ was bothered for a moment.
"`Because, Jim,' sez he, after a while, `it appeared so awful to me when
I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and
terrible beak. It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn't the sea sarpint;
and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know. I'm
a doomed man.'
"I couldn't shake him from that belief, though I thought the whole thing
was fancy on his part, and I turned into my hammock soon after we got
below, without a thought more about the matter--it didn't stop my caulk,
I know. But, ah! that was only in the early morning. Before the day
was done, as Gil had said, that conversation was recalled to me in a
terrible way--ah, a terrible way!" the old sailor repeated impressively,
taking off his tarpaulin hat, and wiping his forehead with his
handkerchief, as if the recollection of the past awed him even now. He
looked so serious that I could not laugh, inclined as I was to ridicule
any such story as that of the fabled sea serpent, which one looks for
periodically as a transatlantic myth to crop up in dull seasons in the
columns of American newspapers.
"And did you see it too?" I asked; "and Gil Saul's prophecy turns out
true?"
"You shall hear," he answered gravely; "I'm not spinning a yarn, as you
call it, Master Charles; I'm telling you the truth."
"Go on, Jim," said I, to reassure him. "I'm listening, all attention."
"At eight bells that day, another man-of-war come in, bringing an empty
slaver she had taken before she had shipped her cargo. In this vessel
we were able to separate some of the poor wretches packed on board our
Brazilian schooner, and so send them comfortably on to Sierra Leone,
which was what we were waiting to do, as I've told you already; and now
being free to go cruising again, we hove up anchor and made our way down
the coast to watch for another slaver which we had heard news of by the
man-o'-war that came in to relieve us.
"We had a spanking breeze all day, for a wonder, as it generally fails
at noon; but towards the evening, when we had made some eighty miles or
so from the Bights, it fell suddenly dead calm, as if the wind had been
shut off slap without warning. It was bright before, but the moment the
calm came a thick white mist rose around the vessel, just like that
which came just now from seaward, and has hidden the island and Spithead
from view; you see how it's reminded me now of the west coast and the
Niger river, Master Charles, don't you?"
"Ay," said I, "Jim, I see what you were driving at."
"Those thick mists," he continued, "always rise on the shores of Afrikey
in the early mornings--just as there was a thick one when Gil had seen
his ghost, as he said--and they comes up again when the sun sets; but
you never sees 'em when the sun's a-shining bright as it was that
arternoon. It was the rummiest weather I ever see. By and by, the mist
lifted a bit, and then there were clumps of fog dancing about on the
surface of the sea, which was oily and calm, just like patches of trees
on a lawn. Sometimes these fog curtains would come down and settle
round the ship, so that you couldn't see to the t'other side of the deck
for a minute, and they brought a fearful bad smell with them, the very
smell of the lagoons ashore with a dash of the niggers aboard the slave
schooner, only a thousand times worse, and we miles and miles away from
the land. It was most unaccountable, and most uncomfortable. I
couldn't make it out at all.
"Jest as I was a-puzzling my brains as to the reason of these fog banks
and the stench they brought with them, Gil Saul came on deck too, and
sheered up alongside of me as I was looking out over the side. His face
was a worse sight than the morning; for, instead of his looking white,
the colour of his skin was grey and ashy, like the face of a corpse. It
alarmed me so that I cried out at once--
"`Go down below, Gil! Go down and report yourself to the doctor!'
"`No,' sez he, `it ain't the doctor an will cure me, Jim; I feel it
coming over me again as I felt this morning. I shall see that sarpint
or ghost again, I feel sure.'
"What with his face and his words, and the bad smell from the fog, I
confess I began to feel queer myself--not frightened exactly--but I'd
have much rather have been on Southsea common in the broad daylight than
where I was at that moment, I can tell you."
"Did you see anything, Jim?" I asked the old sailor at this juncture.
"I seed nothing, Master Charles, _as yet_ but I felt something, I can't
tell what or how to explain; it was a sort of all-overish feeling, as if
something was a-walking over my grave, as folks say, summat uncanny, I
do assure you.
"The captain and the first lieutenant was on the quarter-deck, the
latter with his telescope to his eye a-gazing at something forward
apparently, that he was trying to discern amongst the clumps of fog. I
was nigh them, and being to leeward could hear what they said.
"The first lieutenant, I hears him, turns to the captain over his
shoulder speaking like, and sez he--
"`Captain Manter, I can't make it out exactly, but it's most curious;'
and then turning to me, he sez, `Newman, go down to my steward and ax
him to give you my night-glass.'
"I went down and fetched the glass and handed it to him, he giving me
t'other one to hold; and he claps the night-glass to his eye.
"`By Jove, Captain Manter,' sez he presently, `I was right, it is the
greatest marine monster I ever saw!'
"`Pooh!' says the captain, taking the glass from him and looking
himself. `It's only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this
appearance of the sea!' But presently I heard him mutter something
under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, `It is best
to be prepared;' and a moment after that he gave an order, and the
boatswain piped up and we beat to quarters. It was very strange that,
wasn't it? And so every man on board thought.
"A very faint breeze was springing up again, and I was on the weather
side of the ship, which was towards the land from which the wind came,
when suddenly Gil Saul, who was in the same battery and captain of my
crew, grips my arm tight. `It's coming! it's coming!' he said right in
my ear, and then the same horrible foul smell wafted right over the ship
again, and a noise was heard just as if a herd of wild horses were
sucking up water together.
"At this moment the fog lifted for a bit, and we could see clear for
about a couple of miles to windward, where the captain and first
lieutenant and all the hands had their eyes fixed as if expecting
something.
"By George! you could have knocked me down with a feather, I tell you!
I never saw such a sight in my life, and may I never see such another
again! There, with his head well out of the water, shaped like a big
bird, and higher in the air than the main truck of the ship, was a
gigantic reptile like a sarpint, only bigger than you ever dreamt of.
He was wriggling through the water at a fearful rate, and going nearly
the same course as ourselves, with a wake behind him bigger than a line-
of-battle ship with paddle-wheels, and his length--judging by what I saw
of him--was about half a mile at least, not mentioning what part of his
body was below the water; while he must have been broader across than
the largest sperm whale, for he showed good five feet of freeboard.
"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 gushing 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-balls
with which they were loaded, there was a most treemenjus roar and a dash
of water alongside the ship, and the waves came over us as if we were on
a lee shore; 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 passed 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 ship
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 ship'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
midshipman, the quartermaster, boatswain's mate, and the man at the
wheel--the rest of the ship's company being below at the time?"
"No, Jim," said I, "that's straight enough."
"We was in latitude 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 latitude 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 shifted 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 _Hampshire 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 Ship _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 ship _Daedalus_, under my command, on her
passage 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 latitude 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 ship on the port tack heading North
East by North, something very unusual was seen by Mr Sartons,
midshipman, rapidly approaching the 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
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 passed 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 ship or after it had passed 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
glasses 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!