been having, nor do they frequent the seashore."

"Ah, but this, you see, was a straits, Master Ruthven, just a narrow
straits, and I expect the creatures took it for a river."

"No, no, Jack, we can't swallow the alligators, any more than they
could swallow you and your canoe."

"Well," the sailor said with a sigh, "I won't say no more about the
allygaters. I can't rightly recall when they came into the story.
Howsomdever, I landed, you can believe that, you know."

"Oh yes, we can quite believe, Jack, that, if you were there, in
that canoe, in that back water, with the land close ahead, you did
land."

The sailor looked searchingly at Ruthven and then continued:

"I hauled the canoe up and hid it in some bushes, and it were well
I did, for a short time afterwards a great--" and he paused. "Does
the hippypotybus live in them ere waters, young gents?"

"He does not, Jack," Ruthven said.

"Then it's clear," the sailor said, "that it wasn't a hippypotybus.
It must have been a seal."

"Yes, it might have been a seal," Ruthven said. "What did he do?"

"Well he just took a look at me, gents, winked with one eye, as much