“Several people,” the scientist replied. “In 1680, a Lutheran minister, the Rev. Anson Friis, reported the discovery of a small Kraken, stranded in a fjord near Alstahoug. He described the creature as almost round, with a head something like that of a parrot and a long tail divided into four round swimming paddles. He went on to say that it took him nine minutes of sharp walking to walk round the carcass. Baron Grippenhjelme, the local magnate, was more moderate in his estimate, but even he declared it to be sixty fathoms (300 feet) across. With a better perception than the minister who had first discovered the carcass, he hazarded the guess that the strange creature was a polyp.” “What do you suppose it really was?” queried the boy. “That’s a little difficult to say,” was the guarded reply. “There’s not much evidence to go on. There seems no doubt that Friis and Grippenhjelme found something. The remarks about a parrot’s beak by one, and the other’s reference to a polyp suggest that perhaps a giant squid and an octopus were washed ashore together, and if, as probable, their flesh already was decaying, examination would be apt to be very brief. Don’t forget, Perry, that the size was only an estimate. Even the most conservative guesses shrink under the application of a two-foot rule.” “Yet you seem to think, Uncle George, that some of the sea-serpent reports might have something in them?” “All of them are based on something,” was the reply, “and there are a few that one hesitates to deny. It would almost seem certain that there are some large creatures in the sea, in addition to the whales, though probably nothing as large as a full-sized sulphur-bottom whale. It is equally certain that, whatever these creatures may be, they are not serpents, though they may possess snakelike features. One has to be careful about denials,” he went on, taking a battered old note-book out of his pocket, and turning over the leaves, “because some reports are quite circumstantial. The most famous of them was the report once made by the captain and officers of a British man-o’-war, the frigate _Dædalus_, in 1848. I thought I had that note in here. Yes, here it is. “Listen to this, Perry,” he went on, “and perhaps your disbelief will have a jolt: “‘I have the honor,’” he read, “‘to acquaint you for the information of my Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at 5 o’clock P. M. on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24° 44´ S. and longitude 9° 22´ E. (1,000 miles west of the coast of South Africa) with the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the NW, with a long ocean swell from the SW, the ship on the port tack heading NE by N, something very unusual was seen by Mr. Sartoris, midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam. The circumstance was immediately reported by him to the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr. Wm. Barrett, the master, I was at the time walking the quarterdeck.