MISCELLANEOUS PUZZLES
seen a vanilla iceberg, or a mermaid a-hanging out her things to dry
on the equatorial line, or the blue-winged shark what flies through
the air in pursuit of his prey, or the sea-sarpint -"
" Have you really seen a sea-serpent ? I thought it was uncer-
tain whether they existed."
" Uncertin ! You wouldn't say there was anything uncertin
about a sea-sarpint
if once you'd seen
one. The first as
I seed was when I
was skipper of the
Saucy Sally.
We
was a-coming
round Cape Horn
with a cargo of
shrimps from the
Pacific Islands
when I looks over
the port side and
sees a tremenjus
monster like a
snake, with its 'ead
out of the water
and its eyes flash-
ing fire, a-bearing down on our ship. So I shouts to the bo'sun to
let down the boat, while I runs below and fetches my sword—the
same what I used when I killed King Chokee, the cannibal chief as
eat our cabin-boy—and we pulls straight into the track of that there
sea-sarpint. Well, to make a long story short, when we come along-
side o' the beast I just let drive at him with that sword o' mine, and
before you could say * Tom Bowling' I cut him into three pieces, all
of exactually the same length, and afterwards we hauled 'em aboard
the
Saucy Sally.
What did I do with 'em ? Well, I sold 'em to
a feller in Rio Janeiro, and what do you suppose he done with 'em ?
He used 'em to make tyres for his motor-car—takes a lot to puncture
a sea-sarpint's skin."
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