"Oh, don't!" I said; "I can swallow the auks, feathers and claws, but
if this fellow Halyard is hinting he's seen an amphibious creature
resembling a man--"

"--Or a woman," said the professor, cautiously.

I retired, disgusted, my faith shaken in the mental vigor of Professor
Farrago.




II


The three days' voyage by boat and rail was irksome. I bought my kit
at Sainte Croix, on the Central Pacific Railroad, and on June 1st I
began the last stage of my journey _via_ the Sainte Isole broad-gauge,
arriving in the wilderness by daylight. A tedious forced march by
blazed trail, freshly spotted on the wrong side, of course, brought me
to the northern terminus of the rusty, narrow-gauge lumber railway
which runs from the heart of the hushed pine wilderness to the sea.

Already a long train of battered flat-cars, piled with sluice-props
and roughly hewn sleepers, was moving slowly off into the brooding
forest gloom, when I came in sight of the track; but I developed a
gratifying and unexpected burst of speed, shouting all the while. The
train stopped; I swung myself aboard the last car, where a pleasant
young fellow was sitting on the rear brake, chewing spruce and reading