Carl had just finished a prolonged fit of barking at the ducks when he suddenly fetched such an unusual growl of anger that I looked around to see what the matter could be. The sight that met my gaze paralyzed me, and the oars dropped from my hands. On my port quarter, about three-fourths of a mile distant, there loomed the swaying head and neck of some monster unlike anything I had ever seen or dreamed of in all my life, and I have been a seaman for more than 40 years and visited every part of the navigable globe.     When first seen, the creature was making straight across the bay, with his head 10 feet in the air; but, as it seems, having heard Carl’s defiant and piercing cries, he changed his course and swam directly toward us with fearful velocity, the mighty throes of his extended body emitting a sound not unlike that caused by the pounding of a sidewheel steamer’s paddles.     My first impulse was to reach my trusty shotgun, cartridge belt and hatchet. I plunged into the sea and swam for the raft, about 20 yards astern, calling to my dog to follow me. But I miscalculated the speed of the great snake, for while yet several yards from the raft I heard a howl of agony from my brave Carl. Looking over my shoulder, I instinctively fetched a shriek of horror and despair.     While I had been swimming 15 yards the snake had glided more than half a mile and pounced upon Carl. The dog weighed between 75 and 80 pounds, and his green eyed captor was holding him in his mouth 20 feet in the air. I do not know how I reached the raft, but in less time than it

takes to record it I had seized the gun and sent a heavy charge of buckshot into the creature’s belly about where it emerged from the water. A visible tremor passed through his body, his head fell, and bringing Carl down with frightful velocity the poor dog was hurled against the side of the boat with a force that killed him instantly.     It now appeared that my shot had not only wounded the reptile, but it had angered him to rather a dangerous and alarming degree. Instantly his head was again on high, deafening hissings came from his throat, and the waters for a hundred feet seaward were churned into foam by the horrid writhings of his body.     Again I raised my gun and discharged the other barrel. If my first shot had angered him, my second shot worked him into a frenzy that knew no bounds. Throwing back his great hooded head in true serpentine style, he began to strike at the boat. At one time, fastening his jaws upon the starboard gunwale, he wrenched off a piece of solid timber 5 feet long and 2 inches thick as easily apparently as a man would bite into the thin end of a shingle. Throwing his body into a series of great, vertical coils 8 feet in diameter, he completely encircled the boat, and with one constriction crushed it into a shapeless mass.     After crushing the boat the serpent did not immediately uncoil himself, but lay some minutes with the fragments still in his embrace, while his ever restless tall whipped the surface of the sea.     Curiously enough, in one of its gyrations the end of the tail fell upon my raft, and with what must have been