Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/317

 looked like a great sandbank. What could it be? I was not able to decide.

“Aha! it moves, it dives!” cried Ned. “Thousand devils! what can it be? Its tail is not divided like the whales’ and cachalots’, and its fins look as if they had been cut.”

“But then”

“Look there!” cried the Canadian, “it is on its back!”

“It is a siren, a true siren,” cried Conseil. “If Monsieur has no objection.”

The term “siren” gave me a hint, and I perceived at once that this animal belonged to that order of marine animals which are fabulously called sirens—half-female, half-fish.

“No,” I said to-Conseil, “it is not a siren, but a very curious being of which very few specimens exist in the Red Sea; it is a dugong.”

“Order, sirens; group, pisciform; sub-class, monodolphin; class, mammifer; branch, vertebrates,” replied Conseil.

When Conseil had said this there was nothing to add.

Meanwhile Ned kept his eyes fixed on the dugong, and they shone with expectation. His hand seemed ready to grasp his harpoon, and one would have said that he only awaited the proper moment to throw himself into the sea and attack the animal in his native element.

“Oh, Monsieur!” he said, in a voice trembling with eagerness, “I have never killed one of that kind.”

All the harpooner was in these words.

Just then the captain appeared. He noticed the dugong. Understanding the attitude of the Canadian, he at once addressed him:

“If you had a harpoon in your hand just now, Master Land, it would burn your palm, would it not?”

“Quite true, sir.”