slaty-coloured

Updated: May 17, 2025

And then we stood looking at what seemed to be a great snake swimming, with twenty or thirty feet of its neck outer water; and it was holding it up in a curve just like a swan, and sometimes its head was right up high and sometimes curved down close to the water with its neck in a loop, and all the time it was going along five or six knots an hour. `Why, it is the sea-sarpent! says another of our mates, `look all behind there; you can see its back as it swims, 'tis a hundred foot long, see if it isn't! I looked, and sure enough it did seem to be a great length behind, nearly covered by the water; but, as I stood, it didn't seem to me like a snake swimming, for it seemed more than ever as if what we saw was a great slimy slaty-coloured thing, the make of a swan, swimming with its body nearly all under water and its head out; or, as I afterwards thought, just like one of the big West Indy turtles, such as you'll see by and by if you're lucky."

George Manville Fenn - The Golden Magnet