At the same time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced their sense of the enemy's approach by splash and leap and bubbling circle.

I could detect their hurried flight hither and thither, some even casting themselves ashore.

A long, dark, undulous furrow came moving along the waters, nearer and nearer, till the vast head of the reptile emerged--its jaws bristling with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves hungrily on the spot where I sat motionless.

And now its fore feet were on the strand--now its enormous breast, scaled on either side as in armour, in the centre showing its corrugated skin of a dull venomous yellow; and now its whole length was on the land, a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the tail.

Another stride of those ghastly feet would have brought it to the spot where I sat.