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CONTENTS.

PAGE

The Sea-Serpent visits the Nahant Hotel, under peculiar
Circumstances. - Bathing, Bowling, Billiards interrupted.
-Fight with a Whale,

26

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The Lieutenant relates his Adventure with the Sea-Serpent
in the North Sea. A Sudden Surprise,

-

Fancy Ball at Newport. - New Costume. Picnic at

Gloucester. Great Excitement.

-

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Grand Fight on Land and Water,

Unexpected Guest.

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THE SEA-SERPENT.

COIL I.

"I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move;

These numbers will I tear, and write in prose."
Love's Labor's Lost, Act IV., Scene 3.

This Coil introduces the Ichthyosaurus: from this introduction, the reader, if he dislikes the want of straightforwardness in the character of his new acquaintance, may easily recoil.

I.

IN serpentine mazes this story will stray, to scare you by night, and alarm you by day; if you read it at eve when the bat slowly flits, it may possibly frighten you out of your wits, and unless you 've strong nerves, just throw down the book, and never once dare in its pages to look.

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I promise you here, and I give you my word,

that though some of the scenes may seem vast

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ly absurd, and you smile, but perhaps in the midst of your grin, if you 're fishing, his Snakeship will just suck you in; or perchance, sitting safe on a sea-beaten rock, and of such beasts as Sea-Serpents making a mock, and telling the ladies who sit by your side, that o'er the blue waves you have sailed far and wide, full many strange sights in the ocean have seen, "But Sea Serpents, bless me ! I'm not quite so green! Pontoppidan,1 skippers, may say what they please; when they prove it, I'll own that the moon is green cheese," then just starting up from that wave rolling in, you see first the back and then a great fin. O horror of horrors ! with red glaring eyes, his head and some yards of his body will rise, and seize you, and shake you, his fangs taste your gore, while you shriek, and the aid of the ladies implore, and convulsively grasp at the rocks and the shore; but he's got you; with joy he is wagging his tail; he holds you aloft ;

the ladies, all pale, are fainting and screaming, and tearing their hair; your sister sits mute in an utter despair; fair Fanny is lying quite cold on the rock, and Mary, so sudden and dreadful the shock, has gone off in hysterics, while Alice the gay, half frightened to death, is running away.

II.

A moment, he 's gone! Deep, deep 'neath the wave, he will dine on you safe in his pearlspangled cave, while the lady you loved, and who sat by your side, has plunged from the rock and sunk 'neath the tide.

I told you, dear reader, how shocking 't would be, but that's nothing to what you will by and by see. I don't like to be horrid, but, somehow or other, I'm convinced that this serpent is more than half-brother to a person whom I for the world would not mention, though I own in the last line that was my intention; yet perhaps he is not, but still I believe that the serpent who humbugged our good mother Eve was at least sec

ond-cousin to this one, and he, I fear, was n't

much better than such beasts should be.

III.

If you dare to go down to the beach all alone, the ladies will tell what a hero you've grown; or if for a swim after tea you incline, when the moon on the waves makes swimming divine, you will think - O, how often I 've thought so before! "If his Snakeship should come, why, my last swim is o'er"; and though I can't prove it, I have n't a doubt, that some of those men who so boldly strike out in the surf, and who never come up from the waves, find something more fearful than watery graves. However, the story that I'm going to tell you is one that the bookstores wont soon again sell you. 'T will be funny and horrid, and horrid and funny, and you'll laughingly own that the worth of your money you 've had, for 't will teach you this lesson,

side great care, lest you 're snake ! 2

to take at the sea

caught by the

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