unbelievers in the societies of the wise and the scientific journals.
"The question of the monster" inflamed all minds. Editors of
scientific journals, quarrelling with believers in the supernatural,
spilled seas of ink during this memorable campaign, some even drawing blood;
for from the sea-serpent they came to direct personalities.

During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed buried,
never to revive, when new facts were brought before the public.
It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real
danger seriously to be avoided. The question took quite another shape.
The monster became a small island, a rock, a reef, but a reef of indefinite
and shifting proportions.

On the 5th of March, 1867, the Moravian, of the Montreal Ocean Company,
finding herself during the night in 27@ 30' lat. and 72@ 15' long., struck
on her starboard quarter a rock, marked in no chart for that part of the sea.
Under the combined efforts of the wind and its four hundred horse power,
it was going at the rate of thirteen knots. Had it not been for the superior
strength of the hull of the Moravian, she would have been broken by the shock
and gone down with the 237 passengers she was bringing home from Canada.

The accident happened about five o'clock in the morning, as the day
was breaking. The officers of the quarter-deck hurried to the after-part
of the vessel. They examined the sea with the most careful attention.
They saw nothing but a strong eddy about three cables' length distant,
as if the surface had been violently agitated. The bearings of the place were
taken exactly, and the Moravian continued its route without apparent damage.
Had it struck on a submerged rock, or on an enormous wreck? They could
not tell; but, on examination of the ship's bottom when undergoing repairs,
it was found that part of her keel was broken.