During a thick fog, the pilot experienced an unusual difficulty in steering, owing to strong unnatural currents, which have apparently been caused by a volcanic eruption in the seabed.

A resultant colossal wave nearly upsets their vessel, sinking another nearby, and also spews up a great sea monster from the deeps, mortally wounded.

It first manifests as an eerie white face, blind and framed in the fog, and the three journalists look on bemused as the monster’s mate surfaces, watches him die, and sinks down again to the seabed.

The Dutch journalist, Zuyland, determines to treat the matter in cool scientific fashion, “giving approximate lengths and breadths, and the whole list of the crew whom he had sworn on oath to testify to his facts”.

Truth, he says, “is a naked lady, and if by accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behoves a gentleman either to give her a print petticoat or to turn his back and vow that he did not see”.