"I suppose," said Mr. Softleigh one morning to a jovial, weather-beaten skipper, "you have seen many wonderful sights on the rolling seas?" "Bless you, sir, yes," said the skipper. "P'raps you've never 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 uncertain 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 flashing 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 alongside 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." "What was the length of the creature?" asked Simon. "Well, each piece was equal in length to three-quarters the length of a piece added to three-quarters of a cable. There's a little puzzle for you to work out, young gentleman. How many cables long must that there sea-sarpint 'ave been?" Now, it is not at all to the discredit of Mr. Simon Softleigh that he never succeeded in working out the correct answer to that little puzzle, for it may confidently be said that out of a thousand readers who attempt the solution not one will get it exactly right. 105.--_The Dorcas Society._ At the close of four and a half months' hard work, the ladies of a certain Dorcas Society were so delighted with the completion of a beautiful silk patchwork quilt for the dear curate that everybody kissed everybody else, except, of course, the bashful young man himself, who only kissed his sisters, whom he had called for, to escort home. There were just a gross of osculations altogether. How much longer would the ladies have taken over their needlework task if the sisters of the curate referred to had played lawn tennis instead of attending the meetings? Of course we must assume that the ladies attended regularly, and I am sure that they all worked equally well. A mutual kiss here counts as two osculations. 106.--_The Adventurous Snail._ [Illustration]