“You bet I do,” said the boy emphatically. “Father’s got a picture of it in an old sketch-book of his at home. Wasn’t that the one in which the old explorer said he landed on an island, took possession of it in the name of the King of Sweden, had a church service there, and then decided to wind up with a feast? After a bit, when the fire really got hot, they smelt a smell of burning skin, the ‘island’ began to move, and the bishop and the sailors hardly had time to scramble back aboard the ship and cut the rope fastened to the grappling anchor they had cast ‘ashore,’ when the huge beast plunged down to the bottom of the sea. I know you think a good deal of sea-serpent stories, Uncle George, but I’m leery about that one.” “I’ll confess,” the professor answered, laughing, “that even the fact that the explorer was a bishop doesn’t quite convince me. Yet Svere, King of Norway, claimed to have seen a similar creature, just as large, which he called a husguife.’ If you don’t believe a bishop, how about a king?” “I think he fibbed, too,” was the boy’s ready answer. The professor’s eyes twinkled. “If you do sometime become a paleontologist, my boy,” he said, “you’ll have to learn to comment on other people’s reports in language that is—well, we’ll call it a little more scientific. It is safer, as well as more courteous.” “But they were fibs,” insisted the lad, with all the uncompromising attitude of boyhood. “How would you put that ‘scientifically,’ Uncle George?” “They were—inaccuracies of description consequent upon insufficient opportunity for the development of correct observational methods,” was the reply. “That’s saying the same thing in another way, Perry.” The lad laughed. “Tell me some more of the ‘inaccuracies,’ Uncle,” he said. “Most of them were Norse,” the professor continued. “Just in the same way that all English-speaking people believed in the dragon, and all the Greeks believed in nymphs and fauns, and all the Irish believed in fairies, so the Norse world pinned its faith to the Kraken, or the Warrum or Sea-Worm of Iceland.” “I don’t remember the Kraken,” put in the boy. “Just what was that supposed to be?” “It was described as being a creature of the deepest parts of the sea. It was supposed to be a mile and a half in circumference, and its horns were as high and as large as the masts of small vessels.” “Did any one ever claim to have seen such a beast?”