Part 4

Unlike the octopus, which is capable only of short flights through the water, the "cuttles" and "squids," such as Sepia and Loligo, are all free swimmers. For them it is necessary for accuracy of natation that their soft, and in the squids long bodies, should be supported by such a framework as they possess. In Sepia, the mantle-sac is flattened horizontally all along its lateral edges so as to form a pair of fins, which nearly surround the trunk. These fins could never be used, as they are, to enable the animal to poise itself delicately in the water by means of their beautiful undulations, which I have often watched with delight, if their attached edges were not kept in a straight line on either side. Then, these ten-footed or ten-armed genera have not, because they need them not, eight long, strong and highly mobile arms like those of the octopus, nor have they large suckers upon them. Whereas a great length of reach is an advantage to the octopus, animals which are purely swimmers, and which hunt and overtake their prey by speed, would be impeded by having to drag after them a bundle of stout, lengthy appendages trailing heavily astern. Their eight pedal arms are short and comparatively weak, though strong enough, in individuals such as are regarded on our own coasts as fullgrown, to seize and hold a fish or crustacean as strong as a good sized shore-crab. But, as compensation for the shortness of the eight arms, they are provided with two others more than three times the length of the short ones. These are so slender that they generally lie coiled up in a spiral cone in two pockets, one on each side, just below the eye, when the animal is quiescent, and are only seen when it takes its food. These long, slender tentacular arms are expanded at their extremity, and the inner surface of their enlarged part is studded with suckers--some of them larger in size than those on the eight shorter arms. As the food of these swimmers consists, of course, chiefly of fish, their sucking disks are curiously modified for the better retention of a slippery captive. A horny ring with a sharply serrated edge is imbedded in the outer circumference of each of them, and when a vacuum is formed, the keen, saw-like teeth are pressed into the skin or scales of the unfortunate prisoner, and deprive it of the slightest chance of escape.

The manner in which the eight-armed and ten-armed cephalopods capture their prey is similar in principle and plan, but differs in action in accordance with their mode of life. The ordinary habit of the octopus is either to rest suspended to the side of a rock to which it clings with the suckers of several of its arms, or to remain lurking in some favourite cranny; its body thrust for protection and concealment well back in the interior of the recess; its bright eyes keenly on the watch; three or four of its limbs firmly attached to the walls of its hiding place--the others gently waving, gliding, and feeling about in the water, as if to maintain its vigilance, and keep itself always on the alert, and in readiness to pounce on any unfortunate wayfarer that may pass near its den. To a shore-crab that comes within its reach the slightest contact with one of those lithe arms is fatal. Instantaneously as pull of trigger brings down a bird, or touch of electric wire explodes a torpedo or a mining fuse, the pistons of the series of suckers are simultaneously drawn inward, the air is removed from the pneumatic holders, and a vacuum created in each: the crab tries to escape, but in a second is completely pinioned: not a movement, not a struggle is possible; each leg, each claw is grasped all over by suckers, enfolded in them, stretched out to its fullest extent by them; the back of the carapace is completely covered by the tenacious disks, brought together by the adaptable contractions of the limb, and ranged in close order, shoulder to shoulder, touching each other; and the pressure of the air is so great that nothing can effect the relaxation of their retentive power but the destruction of the air-pump that works them, or the closing of the throttle-valve by which they are connected with it. Meanwhile the abdominal plates of the captive crab are dragged towards the mouth; the black tip of the hard horny beak is seen for a single instant protruding from the circular orifice in the centre of the radiation of the arms; and, the next, has crushed through the shell, and is buried deep in the flesh of the victim.

Unlike the skulking, hiding octopus, its ten-armed relative, the Sepia loves the daylight and the freedom of the upper water. Its predatory acts are not those of a concealed and ambushed brigand lying in wait behind a rock, or peeping furtively from within the gloomy shadow of a cave; but it may better be compared to the war-like Comanche vidette seated gracefully on his horse, and scanning from some elevated knoll a wide expanse of prairie, in readiness to swoop upon a weak or unarmed foe. Poised near the surface of the water, like a hawk in the air, the Sepia moves gently to and fro by graceful undulations of its lateral fins,--an exquisite play of colour occasionally taking place over its beautifully barred and mottled back. When thus tranquil, its eight pedal arms are usually brought close together, and droop in front of its head, like the trunk of an elephant, shortened; its two longer tentacular arms being coiled up within their pouches and unseen. Only when some small fish approaches it does it arouse itself. Then, its eyes dilate, and its colours become more bright and vivid. It carefully takes aim, advancing or retreating to such a distance as will just allow the two hidden tentacles to reach the quarry when they shall be shot out. Next, the two highest or central feet are lifted up, and the three others on each side are spread aside, so that they may be all out of the way of the two concealed tentacles, presently to be launched forth; and then, in a moment--so instantaneously that the eye of an observer, be he ever so watchful, can hardly see the act--this pair of tentacles, side by side, are projected and withdrawn, as if in a flash. The fish or shrimp has vanished, the suckers of the dilated ends of the tentacles having adhered to it, and left it, as they re-entered their pouches, within the fatal "cuddle," or embrace, where it is torn to pieces by the devouring beak. This action of the tentacles of the decapods is the most rapid motion that I know of in the whole animal kingdom--not excepting even that of the tongue of the toad and the lizard. These long tentacles are not used when the food is within reach of the shorter arms.

See an excellent article in the Field, Sept. 2, 1876, on the 'Ten Footed Cuttle' (Sepia officinalis), by the late Mr. W. A. Lloyd, an earnest and accomplished aquatic zoologist; eccentric, but in all that relates to the construction and management of an aquarium a master of his craft. It was his wish that in any future edition of my little book on the Octopus, or other writings on the cephalopods, I should use the woodcuts which illustrated his articles on Sepia and Octopus. By the kind permission of the proprietors of the Field, I reproduce them in suitable size for these pages.

The calamaries or squids of our British Seas seize their prey in the same manner as Sepia, and the description of one will suffice for both. But there exist two groups of them, which are armed with curved and sharp-pointed hooks or claws, either in addition to, or instead of suckers. In the one group (Onychoteuthis), the hooks are restricted to the extremities of the pair of tentacles, in the other (Enoploteuthis), both the tentacles and the shorter arms have hooks. Professor Owen, in his description of these hook-armed calamaries in the Cyclopaedia of Anatomy, notices also another structure which adds greatly to their prehensile power (Fig. 4.). "At the extremity of the long tentacles a cluster of small, simple, unarmed suckers may be observed at the base of the expanded part. When these latter suckers are applied to one another the tentacles are securely locked together at that part, and the united strength of both the elongated peduncles can be applied to drag towards the mouth any resisting object which has been grappled by the terminal hooks. There is no mechanical contrivance which surpasses this structure; art has remotely imitated it in the fabrication of the obstetrical forceps, in which either blade can be used separately, or, by the inter-locking of a temporary blade, be made to act in combination."

The cephalopods obtain and eat their food very much like the rapacious birds. They are the falcons of the sea. Some of them, like Onychoteuthis, strike their prey with talons and suckers also, others lay hold of it with suckers alone; but they all tear the flesh with their beaks, and swallow and digest their food in the same manner as the hawk or vulture.

The Sepia, the owner of the broad, flattened bone, has a decided predilection for the vicinity of the shore, and for comparatively shallow water. It there attaches its grape-like eggs to some convenient stone or growing alga, and delights occasionally to sink to the bottom, and there to rest half covered by the sand, a habit for which the form of its body is well adapted. But the calamaries--they of the horny pen--prefer the wide waters of the open ocean; and although they, too, especially the smaller species, are common upon the coasts, they are frequently met with far out at sea, and away from any land. The elongated and almost arrow-like shape of their bodies enables them to glide through the water with great rapidity, and the momentum exerted by a vigorous out-rush from their syphon-tube is sometimes so great that when the opposite pressure thus produced is so exerted as to cause them to take an upward direction they leap out of the water to so great a height as to fall on the decks of ships; and are, therefore, called by sailors, "flying squids." Their spawn is very different from that of either octopus, or sepia. It consists of dozens of semi-transparent, gelatinous, slender, cylindrical sheaths, about four or five inches long, each containing many ova imbedded in it (making a total number of about 40,000 embryos), all springing from a common centre and resembling a mop without a handle. I have never seen any of these "sea-mops" attached to anything, and the pelagic habits of the calamaries render it probable that they are left floating on the surface of the sea.

Having made ourselves acquainted with the structure and habits of these three divisions of the eight-footed and ten-footed mollusks, let us take evidence as to the size to which they are respectively known to attain, and the degree in which they may be regarded as dangerous to man.

An octopus from our own coasts having arms two feet in length may be considered a rather large specimen; and Dr. J. E. Gray, who was always most kindly ready to place at the disposal of any sincere inquirer the vast store of knowledge laid up in his wonderful memory, told me that "there is not one in the British Museum which exceeds this size, or which would not go into a quart pot--body, arms and all." The largest British specimen I have hitherto seen had arms 2 ft. 6 in. long. We have sufficient evidence, however, that it exceeds this in the South of France, and along the Spanish and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean; and my deceased friend John Keast Lord tells us in his book, 'The Naturalist in British Columbia,' that he saw and measured, in Vancouver's Island, an octopus which had arms five feet long.

I have often been asked whether an octopus of the ordinary size can really be dangerous to bathers. Decidedly, "Yes," in certain situations. The holding power of its numerous suckers is enormous. It is almost impossible forcibly to detach it from its adhesion to a rock or the flat bottom of a tank; and if a large one happened to fix one or more of its strong, tough arms on the leg of a swimmer whilst the others held firmly to a rock, I doubt if the man could disengage himself under water by mere strength, before being exhausted. Fortunately the octopus can be made to relax its hold by grasping it tightly round the "throat" (if I may so call it), and it may be well that this should be known.

That men are occasionally drowned by these creatures is, unhappily, a fact too well attested. I have elsewhere related several instances of this having occurred. Omitting those, I will give two or three others which have since come under my notice. Sir Grenville Temple, in his 'Excursions in the Mediterranean Sea,' tells how a Sardinian captain, whilst bathing at Jerbeh, was seized and drowned by an octopus. When his body was found, his limbs were bound together by the arms of the animal; and this took place in water only four feet deep.

See 'The Octopus; or, the Devil-fish of Fiction and of Fact.' 1873. Chapman and Hall.

Mr. J. K. Lord's account of the formidable strength of these creatures in Oregon is confirmed by an incident recorded in the Weekly Oregonian (the principal paper of Oregon) of October 6th, 1877. A few days before that date an Indian woman, whilst bathing, was held beneath the surface by an octopus, and drowned. The body was discovered on the following day in the horrid embrace of the creature. Indians dived down and with their knives severed the arms of the octopus and recovered the corpse.

Mr. Clemens Laming, in his book, 'The French in Algiers,' writes:--"The soldiers were in the habit of bathing in the sea every evening, and from time to time several of them disappeared--no one knew how. Bathing was, in consequence, strictly forbidden; in spite of which several men went into the water one evening. Suddenly one of them screamed for help, and when several others rushed to his assistance they found that an octopus had seized him by the leg by four of its arms whilst it clung to the rock with the rest. The soldiers brought the 'monster' home with them, and out of revenge they boiled it alive and ate it. This adventure accounted for the disappearance of the other soldiers."

The Rev. W. Wyatt Gill, who for more than a quarter of a century has resided as a missionary amongst the inhabitants of the Hervey Islands, and with whom I had the pleasure of conversing on this subject when he was in England in 1875, described in the Leisure Hour of April 20th, 1872, another mode of attack by which an octopus might deprive a man of life. A servant of his went diving for "poulpes" (octopods), leaving his son in charge of the canoe. After a short time he rose to the surface, his arms free, but his nostrils and mouth completely covered by a large octopus. If his son had not promptly torn the living plaister from off his face he must have been suffocated--a fate which actually befell some years previously a man who foolishly went diving alone.

In Appleton's American Journal of Science and Art, January 31st, 1874, a correspondent describes an attack by an octopus on a diver who was at work on the wreck of a sunken steamer off the coast of Florida. The man, a powerful Irishman, was helpless in its grasp, and would have been drowned if he had not been quickly brought to the surface; for when dragged on to the raft from which he had descended, he fainted, and his companions were unable to pull the creature from its hold upon him until they had dealt it a sharp blow across its baggy body.

A similar incident occurred to the government diver of the colony of Victoria, Australia. Whilst pursuing his avocation in the estuary of the river Moyne he was seized by an octopus. He killed it by striking it with an iron bar, and brought to shore with him a portion of it with the arms more than three feet long.

Mr. Laurence Oliphant, in his 'China and Japan,' describes a Japanese show, which consisted of "a series of groups of figures carved in wood, the size of life, and as cleverly coloured as Madame Tussaud's wax-works. One of these was a group of women bathing in the sea. One of them had been caught in the folds of a cuttle-fish; the others, in alarm, were escaping, leaving their companion to her fate. The cuttle-fish was represented on a huge scale, its eyes, eyelids, and mouth being made to move simultaneously by a man inside the head."

An attack of this kind is most artistically represented in a small Japanese ivory-carving in the possession of Mr. Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens.

This carving was figured in illustration of an interesting paper by Professor Owen, C.B., F.R.S., &c., "On some new and rare Cephalopoda," in the Transactions of the Zoological Society, April 20, 1880.

The Japanese are well acquainted with the octopus; for it is commonly depicted on their ornaments, and forms no unimportant item in their fisheries.

I have recently had an opportunity of inspecting a most curious Japanese book, in the possession of my friend Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier, which is chiefly devoted to the representations of the fisheries and fish-curing processes of the country. It is in three volumes, and is entitled, 'Land and Sea Products,' by Ki Kone. It is evidently ancient, for it is slightly worm-eaten, but the plates, each 12 inches by 8 inches, are full of vigour. Two of these illustrate in a very interesting manner the subject before us, and by the kindness of Mr. Tegetmeier I am able to give facsimiles of them, which appeared with an article by him on this book, in the Field of March 14th, 1874. Fig. 5 represents a fisherman in a boat out at sea: a gigantic octopus has thrown one of its arms over the side of the boat; the man, who is alone, has started forward from the stern of the boat, and has succeeded, by means of a large knife attached to a long handle, in lopping off the dangerous limb of his enemy. As Mr. Tegetmeier says, "From the extreme matter of fact manner in which all these engravings are made, and the total absence of exaggeration in any other representation, I cannot but regard the relative sizes of the man, the boat, and the octopus, as correctly given, in which case we have evidence of the existence of gigantic cephalopods in Japanese waters." The only doubt I have is whether the fisherman correctly described his assailant as an octopus, and whether it was not a calamary. Fig. 6 is a vivid picture of a fishmonger's shop in a market, under the awning of which may be seen two arms of a gigantic cuttle hung up for sale as food. These are evidently of most unusual size, judging from the action of the lookers on; the one to the left, with a tall stand or case on his back, like a Parisian cocoa-vendor, is holding out his hand in mute astonishment; whilst the attention of the smaller personage in the right-hand corner is directed to the suspended arms of the cuttle by the man nearest to him, who is pointing to them with upraised hand. In another plate in this most interesting work a Japanese mode of fishing for cuttles is delineated. A man in a boat is tossing crabs, one at a time, into the sea, and when a cuttle rises at the bait he spears it with a trident and tosses it into the boat.

The octopus, therefore, though not abundant on our own coasts, is found in every sea in the temperate zone; and in so far as that it secretes an ink with which it can render the water turbid, and has many radiating arms with which it can seize and drown a man, it possesses certain attributes of the Kraken; but we have no authentic knowledge of its ever attaining to greater dimensions than I have stated, nor does it bask on the surface of the sea. It is not amongst the Octopidae therefore that we must look for a solution of the mystery.

The basking condition is fulfilled by the Sepia; and its flattened back, supported and rendered hard and firm to the touch by the calcareous sepiostaire beneath the skin, is broader in proportion than that of the octopus or the squid. Thus Sepia might pass as a microscopic miniature of the great Scandinavian monster. But it lacks the character of size. We have no reason to believe that any true Sepia exists, as the family is now understood, that has a body more than eighteen inches long. If it were otherwise it would be more likely to be known of this family than of its relatives, for its lightly constructed and well known "cuttle-bone" would float on the surface for many weeks after the death of its owner, and large specimens of it would be seen and recognised from passing ships.

As we can find no species of the Octopidae or Sepiidae which can furnish a pretext for the stories told of the Kraken, we must try to ascertain how far a similitude to it may be traced in the third family we have discussed, the Teuthidae.

The belief in the existence of gigantic cuttles is an ancient one. Aristotle mentions it, and Pliny tells of an enormous polypus which at Carteia, in Grenada--an old and important Roman colony near Gibraltar--used to come out of the sea at night, and carry off and devour salted tunnies from the curing depots on the shore; and adds that when it was at last killed, the head of it (they used to call the body the head, because in swimming it goes in advance) was found to weigh 700 lbs. AElian records a similar incident, and describes his monster as crushing in its arms the barrels of salt fish to get at the contents. These two must have been octopods if they were anything; the word "polypus" thus especially designates it, and moreover, the free-swimming cuttles and squids would be helpless if stranded on the shore. Some of the old writers seem to have aimed rather at making their histories sensational than at carefully investigating the credibility or the contrary of the highly coloured reports brought to them. These were, of course, gross exaggerations, but there was generally a substratum of truth in them. They were based on the rare occurrence of specimens, smaller certainly, but still enormous, of some known species, and in most cases the worst that can be said of their authors is that they were culpably careless and foolishly credulous.

Unhappily so lenient a judgment cannot be passed on some comparatively recent writers. Denys de Montfort, half a century later than Pontoppidan, not only professed to believe in the Kraken, but also in the existence of another gigantic animal distinct from it; a colossal poulpe, or octopus, compared with which Pliny's was a mere pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside of a showman's caravan at a fair than seriously to illustrate a work on natural history, he depicted this tremendous cuttle as throwing its arms over a three masted vessel, snapping off its masts, tearing down the yards, and on the point of dragging it to the bottom, if the crew had not succeeded in cutting off its immense limbs with cutlasses and hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtaining information, for he was at one time an assistant in the geological department of the Museum of Natural History, in Paris; and wrote a work on conchology, besides that already referred to. But it appears to have been his deliberate purpose to cajole the public; for it is reported that he exclaimed to M. Defrance: "If my entangled ship is accepted, I will make my 'colossal poulpe' overthrow a whole fleet." Accordingly we find him gravely declaring that one of the great victories of the British navy was converted into a disaster by the monsters which are the subject of his history. He boldly asserted that the six men-of-war captured from the French by Admiral Rodney in the West Indies on the 12th of April, 1782, together with four British ships detached from his fleet to convoy the prizes, were all suddenly engulphed in the waves on the night of the battle under such circumstances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by colossal cuttles, and not by a gale or any ordinary casualty.

'Histoire Naturelle generale et particuliere des Mollusques,' vol. ii., p. 256.