Each wife pursu’d her husband, and every child its mother, Lads and lasses _helter skelter_, scamper’d after one another; Shopkeepers and mechanics too, forsook their daily labours, And ran to gape and stare among their gaping staring neighbours. All crowded to the river side, when told by the barber, That a terrible _Sea Monster_ had got into the harbour. It happens very frequently that _barber’s news_ is _fiction_, Sir, But the wond’rous news this morning was truth no contradiction, Sir; A something sure enough was there among the billows flouncing, Now sinking in the deep profound, now on th’ surface bouncing. True as Gazette or Gospel were the tidings of the barber, That a terrible _Sea Monster_ had got into the harbour. Some thought it was a _Shark_, Sir, a _Porpus_ some conceived it; Some said it was a _Grampus_, and some a _Whale_ believ’d it; Some swore it was a _Sea Horse_, then own’d themselves mistaken, For, now they’d got a nearer view--’twas certainly _a Kraken_. Each sported his opinion, from the parson to the barber, Of the terrible _Sea Monster_ they had got in the harbour. “Belay, belay,” a sailor cried, “_what that, this thing_, a _Kraken_! ’Tis no more like one, split my jib, than it is a flitch of bacon! I’ve often seen a hundred such, all sporting in the Nile, Sir, And you may trust a sailor’s word, it is a _Crocodile_, Sir.” Each strait to Jack _knocks under_, from the parson to the barber, And all agreed a _Crocodile_ had got into the harbour. Yet greatly Jack’s discovery his auditors did shock, Sir, For they dreaded that the _Salmon_ would be eat up by the Croc. Sir: When presently the _Crocodile_, their consternation crowning, Raised its head above the waves, and cried, “_Help! O Lord, I’m drowning!_” Heavens! how their hair, Sir, stood on end, from the parson to the barber; To find a _Speaking Crocodile_ had got into the harbour. This dreadful exclamation appall’d both young and old, Sir, In the very stoutest hearts, indeed, it made the blood run cold, Sir; Ev’n _Jack_, the hero of the Nile, it caus’d to quake and tremble, Until an old wife, sighing, cried “_Alas! ’tis Stephen K----._” Heav’ns! however all astonish’d, from the parson to the barber, To find that Stephen K---- was the monster in the harbour.