an' in such case, when, about eight hells one arternoon, the lookout at
the masthead--"

"Thought you couldn't climb? How'd he get there?" said the same skeptic.

"Give me time, Parmiter, and you'll know all about the hows an' whys,
notwithstandin's and sobeits. He'd been there for a week, for why? 'cos
he couldn't get down. We passed him up a quarter pint o' water and a
biscuit or two every day by a halyard.

"Well, as I was sayin', all at once the lookout calls out, 'Land
ho!'--leastways he croaked it, 'cos what with weakness and little water
our throats was as dry as last year's biscuit.

"'Where away?' croaks first mate, which I remember his name was Tonking.

"And there, sure enough, we seed a small island, which it might be a
quarter-mile long. Now, mind you, we hadn't made a knot for three weeks.
How did that island come there so sudden like? In course, it must ha'
come up from the bottom o' the sea. And as we was a-lookin' at it we saw
it grow, mateys--long spits o' land shootin' out this side, that side,
and t'other side--and the whole concarn begins to move towards us, comin'
on, hand over hand, slow, dead slow, but sure and steady. Our jaws were
just a-droppin' arter our teeth when fust mate busts out in a laugh; by
thunder, I remember that there laugh today! 'twas like--well, I don't
know what 'twas like, if not the scrapin' of a handsaw; an' says he, 'By
Neptune, 'tis a darned monstrous squid!'

"And, sure enough, that was what it was, a squid as big round as the Isle
o' Wight, with arms that ud reach from Wapping Stairs to Bugsby Marshes,