a while when I am on shore, but never
at sea and never in excess, and I know it wasn't a vision of drink
delirium. I felt perfectly normal aside from my nervousness, and I don't
think it was fever. Either I saw it or I am insane, for it is as vivid
to me as though I were standing on the _Arethusa's_ deck and that
monstrous horror was rising once more before my eyes."

The seaman's face had become drawn and white as he talked, and drops of
sweat were trickling from his chin. Carnes sat forward absorbed in his
narrative while Dr. Bird sat back with a glitter in his black eyes and
an expression of great attention on his face.

"Go on, Mr. Mitchell," the doctor said soothingly. "Tell me just what
you saw."

* * * * *

Mitchell shuddered and glanced quickly around the laboratory as though
to assure himself that he was safe within four walls.

"From the surface of the sea," he went on, "rose a massive body, black,
and of the appearance of wet leather. It must have been a couple of
hundred yards across, although the size of objects is often magnified by
moonlight and my terror may have added to its size. In the midst of it
were two great discs, thirty feet across, which glowed red with the
reflected moonlight. It stared for a moment and then rose higher until
it towered above the ship; and then I saw, or thought I saw, a huge
gaping beak like a parrot's. It was as Green had described it, large
enough to bite the _Arethusa_ in half, and she was a ship of three
thousand tons.

"I was frozen with horror and couldn't move or cry out. As I watched, I
saw the long snake-like body emerge from the water, and the estimate I
had made of the size in the afternoon seemed pitifully inadequate.
Presently a second and a third snake arose from the water, and then
more, until the whole sea and the air above it seemed a writhing mass of
huge snakes. I remember wondering why the watch of the Coast Guard
cutter didn't sound an alarm, and then I realized that the thing had
arisen on our port side and the cutter was on the starboard.

"The mass of snakes writhed backward and forward, and then two of them
rose in the air and hung over the ship. I could see the under side and I
saw what Green had called the scars where the sharks had attacked. They
were great cup-shaped depressions with vile white edges, and they did
resemble huge sores or ulcers. They wavered over the ship for an
instant, and then both of them