Mr. Simon Softleigh
had spent most of his life
between Tooting
Bec and
Fenchurch Street.
His knowledge of the sea was therefore very limited.
So, as he was taking a holiday on the south coast, he thought this was
a
splendid opportunity for picking up a little useful
information.
He
therefore proceeded to "draw" the natives.
"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.
See answer
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