that the captain's supper had disagreed with him that night, or that he was half-seas-over.
"Now, I haven't much learning myself, but I do despise what I have seen called science; men who study books only, can't know so much as those who see the real things; I haven't patience with men who, never having travelled much, or been across the oceans, quietly tell the world that what a hundred sane men's experienced eyes have seen and known as a sea-serpent is discovered by their scientific reasoning to be a bundle of seaweed, or a shoal of porpoises, because they saw once at Brighton one or the other, when even a land-lubber could hardly have been mistaken. My wise doctor tried to prove that what the skipper had seen with his own eyes was nothing but the result of a supper he hadn't eaten, or the fumes of some grog that weren't swallowed; because it happened not to be accounted for in his fusty old books in any other way--I would sooner be without science, if this is the result.
"Bless you, sir, I ne
