Page:The Mystery of Choice - Chambers.djvu/271

Rh appeared, spade on shoulder, boots smeared with mud.

"Well," he said, "nothing to report, Dick, my boy?"

"Nothing, professor."

He wiped his shining face with his handkerchief and stared at the water.

"My calculations lead me to believe," he said, "that our prize may be due any day now. This theory I base upon the result of the report from the last sea captain I saw. I can not understand why some of these captains did not take the carcass in tow. They all say that they tried, but that the body sank before they could come within half a mile. The truth is, probably, that they did not stir a foot from their course to examine the thing."

"Have you ever cruised about for it?" I ventured.

"For two years," he said grimly. "It's no use; it's accident when a ship falls in with it. One captain reports it a thousand miles from where the last skipper spoke it, and always in the Gulf Stream. They think it is a different specimen every time, and the papers are teeming with sea-serpent fol-de-rol."

"Are you sure," I asked, "that it will swing in to the coast on this Gulf Stream loop?"

"I think I may say that it is certain to do so. I experimented with a dead right whale. You