“That’s so, Uncle George,” the boy said, turning, “this is where the old Greeks believed Scylla to be, isn’t it? But I’d rather tackle that six-headed monster, in spite of all her appetite, even though each head took a man from the crew, as it did from Ulysses’ ship, than I would run the gauntlet of the guns of Gibraltar let loose on us. Still, even Scylla might be uncomfortable. What do you suppose was the basis of that old story, Uncle George!” “Personification of the peril of adventure,” was the reply. “That is why Scylla and Charybdis were first said to hold guard over the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, while afterwards the twin terrors of the ravening whirlpool and the six-headed man-eating woman monster were located at Gibraltar. As the Straits of Messina became more familiar, the terror had to be put farther away, where only the most daring would venture. “Remember, Perry, that the Greeks believed they saw a god or a goddess or a demon in all the forces of Nature. The sea was under the rule of Poseidon, or Neptune, as the Romans called him; the dawn goddess Eos, or Aurora, was the mother of the Winds, such as Boreas, the North Wind and Zephyr, the West Wind. So, you see, the Greeks felt sure that every point of danger must be guarded by some kind of demon or monstrous form, while beautiful places were inhabited by fair maidens. After all, Perry, it’s not so very long ago since people believed in mermaids. So far as that goes, some people believe in them still.” “Uncle George,” exclaimed the boy in surprise, “surely they don’t!” “Oh, yes, they do,” the professor replied. “In the year 1903—that’s not so long ago—two girls who lived on the Island of Sark, one of the Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, came hurrying to the house of the village clergyman, telling him that they had found a baby with a fish’s tail on a beach, and that it was swimming in a pool of water. They were going to pick it up, they said, but when one of the girls put her hand down toward it, the supposed baby opened its mouth and showed a row of sharp teeth like a fish.” “But they couldn’t have seen any such thing!” declared the boy. “I know enough for that.” “Wait a bit,” came the warning answer; “you haven’t heard all the story yet. The minister or abbé, who seems to have been an inquisitive fellow, hurried to the place with the two girls. There, in a rock pool, as he described it in a communication to some local scientific society, he found a mermaid, a little creature not quite three feet long, but looking more like an old woman than a baby, as the girls had described it. He remarks, in his letter, in a certain naïve way, that the mermaid did not seem to understand either English or French. Thinking that she might be bewitched, he baptized her, then and there.” “Baptized her!” said Perry, in surprise. “What for? Did he think she could go to church on a tail?”