"Among the islands of the Indian Ocean the cuttle-fish is the great dread of the natives, and on the coast of Madagascar the negroes will not venture to swim near rocks or cliffs. They will tell you any number of stories of men that have been pulled under water by these fish and drowned; and from their great dread of the fish, it is very evident that their stories are not works of fiction. "So much for the huge inhabitants of the deep that we know about; let us come to the sea-serpent himself, and investigate the cases in which he is said to have been seen. "The Rev. Paul Egede, missionary to Greenland in the eighteenth century, says as follows: "'On the 6th day of July, 1734, there appeared a very large and frightful sea-monster which raised itself so high out of water that its head reached above our main-top. It had a long, sharp snout, and spouted water like a whale, and very broad flappers. The body seemed to be covered with scales, and the skin was uneven and wrinkled, and the lower part was formed like a snake. After some time the creature plunged backward into the water, and then turned its tail up above the surface, a whole ship-length from the head.'" "Perhaps it was only a whale he saw," Frank remarked. "I should have said," responded the Doctor, "that the good missionary was as familiar as an old whaleman with the appearance of the whale and his kindred, and furthermore that his book shows him in other things to have been a very careful and exact observer. "Bishop Pontoppidan, of Norway, devoted a good deal of time to the investigation of the sea-serpent, and personally sought out all the mariners he could hear of who had seen one of the monsters. Here is the story told by Captain Lawrence de Ferry, of Bergen, Norway, and he, with two of his sailors, made oath to its correctness before a magistrate: