CHAPTER XIII
In Which I Learn a Deal About Sea Monsters in General and the Giant Squid in Particular
“A squid of that size?” cried the young second mate, doubtfully, while I gave my closer attention to the long, dark brown body that lay quivering upon the surface of the sea.
“There’s bigger,” said Mate Hollister, grimly. “Ask any old Norwegian hardshell about the ‘kraken.’ I don’t mean the octopus; I mean the real devil-fish—the squid.”
“I know the octopus and the squid are two different creatures,” said Barney.
“Yes. And that yonder is a squid—a devil-fish of the largest size. There! you can see his fore-arms now—look!”
I had observed something moving thirty feet beyond one end of the bulky brown creature. Two snake-like tentacles suddenly whipped out of the water. They bore between their ends a struggling fish. In a moment tentacles and fish disappeared, apparently sucked in toward the head of the monster.
“Good-bye, Johnny Fish!” said Mr. Hollister, grimly. “The parrot-beaks of that gentleman have snapped him up.”
I had seen small squid. This beast lying on the sea so near us was between fifty and sixty feet long, with an average diameter of something like five feet, and a ten-foot breadth of tail.
The squid are the natural food of the sperm whale. Often the whale is so greedy for the squid that it tackles one of these giants and swallows the hard and indigestible beak which, causing a disease in the cetacean’s stomach, sometimes brings about the death of the gourmand. As parts of squid beaks have been found imbedded in masses of ambergris, scientists are quite convinced that this gormandizing of the sperm whale on squid is the immediate cause of that secretion in its stomach which, strange as it may seem, is the basis of many of the best perfumes. Ambergris is a very valuable “by-product” of the sperm whale.
The orca—that tiger of the sea—is inordinately fond of the squid, too, as a diet. This devil-fish, with its eight short arms, each covered on the underside with innumberable “suckers,” and its two fishing-arms which have suckers only at the extremity, excites no fear in the killer-whale.
Concealed at the base of the squid’s ten arms is the terrible beak, shaped like that of a hawk, except that the upper jaw shuts into the lower. This beak is likewise dark brown in color, almost black at the tips, and is supported by powerful muscles.
Years ago there was a huge squid captured at Catalina, on the southern shore of Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. This squid was bought by the New York Aquarium and was the largest perfect specimen of its kind ever examined by scientists. Of course, they had to satisfy themselves with a post-mortem examination!
The beak of this immense fish—which could not have been much larger than the one we were contemplating from the deck of the Seamew—was as big as a six-gallon keg.
No animal can have a more formidable appearance, or a more deadly grasp, than these squid. It would seem as though the long, flexible, muscular tentacles were a sufficient means of defense and offense, without their being armed with the terrible suction cups.
These cups have a serrated edge like a handsaw, and are used for anchors as well as to secure prey. They cling with the greatest tenacity, it being easier to tear away an arm from the body of the squid, than to force the beast to give up its hold. It has all the desperate nature of a bulldog.
The beak, or jaw, is provided with terrible teeth, and even the tongue is covered on the upper part by a horny bed, bristling in the center with a series of recurving teeth, while its edge is armed with three other erect teeth, which are slender and hooked. A man might as well put his hand into a knitting machine and expect to take it out unscarred, as to risk a hand in the jaws of a squid. Those teeth tear the creature’s food to shreds.
And one other characteristic the squid possesses which gives it advantage over both enemy and prey. When excited, and at will, it can eject a substance like ink—indeed, it was used by the ancients as ink—by which it clouds the sea, and so often escapes an enemy. Its own eyes being of a phosphorescent nature, it can see well enough through the haze of this cloud of ink, therefore its prey cannot escape. Besides, its fishing-arms being three times the length of its other tentacles, the squid can “fish a long way from headquarters.”
This ink of the squid, or cuttle-fish, when dried, is used in water-color painting, and is known by the name of “sepia.” It is practically indestructible.
Now, all this by the way of introducing the squid. The Seamew crept by the creature and I, for one, was not sorry to see it finally disappear. And from what the men told about the cuttle-fish I judged that it would have been the part of unwisdom for Mr. Barney to have fired at the creature.
“Lemme tell you,” said old Job Perkins, leaning on the rail beside me. “Them ain’t critters to fool with. I know. I been there and learned.”
“Did you ever get real close to a big squid, Job?” I asked him.
“Big enough and near enough to suit me,” he said, wagging his head and expectorating over the rail. “I went up against a reef-squid once—in the Galapagos, it was—and that was enough for Job. Yes, sir!
“I was in the clipper ship Chelsea that time, I was,” continued the old man, taking another “chaw.” “Cap’n Daggett ordered a boat ashore for turtles. He shot ’em for soup and fresh meat. Good eatin’, too. But I took a seal-club with me, for I wanted a sea-lion’s skin to make me a pair of moccasins, and I’d heard ’em roaring when we dropped anchor.
“I went off by myself and waded around a low, rocky point, in water not ha’f knee deep, but deep jest outside, when I saw Mr. Squid moving along atop of the water. He made considerable thrashing as he come along, like a whirligig waterwheel; his body part looked bigger than I am, and his arms two or three times as long—at any rate, them two long arms was tremendous.
“It headed into a little bay ahead of me,” pursued Job, “and when it got into about three foot of water it dropped anchor and began to feel around with three or four of its arms. The upperside of them arms were brown colored like the rocks, with wrinkles and stiff bristles all along the edge; the underside was white—sort of a nasty, yallerish, dead-looking white—with suckers like saucers in two rows. What I took to be the head had something like eyes; but I couldn’t make ’em out plain.
“Ye know how it is when ye see a snake, when you’re walking on shore,” said old Job. “Ye always want to try and kill it. That’s the way I felt about that squid. I didn’t think of any danger when I waded to it, but it seemed to be watchin’ me, for it squared round, head-on. I hit it a clip with my iron-bound seal-club, when, quick as a thought, it took a turn around the club with one o’ them short suckers, and held on. I pulled my blessedest, but the critter was too much for me. Then’s when I’d oughter backed out.
“But I was obstinate and I kept tugging at the club. Just then it showed its head—it shot out from the knob in front, a brown-and-purple spotted thing with the eyes showing. And in a second one of its arms was around me. It wound around my bare leg and another shot around my neck. The suckers took hold like a doctor’s cups.
“It began to heave and haul on me. You kin guess I pulled and hollered. I got out my knife and hacked at it, but it would have mastered me—it sure would!—if Cap’n Daggett hadn’t come running along the shore and fired both barrels of his gun into its head. Then it let go and slid back into deep water, squirting its nasty ink all about.
“I ain’t never fooled with no squid again,” concluded Job Perkins. “They ain’t no pets.”
It was later in that day, when I was standing my trick on lookout, and the Seamew had got a better wind and was forging ahead at a spanking pace, that Mr. Hollister and Mr. Barney stood near me and I heard the second mate ask the older man about the experience he had had with a giant squid.
“Yes,” said Mr. Hollister, “when I was a young fellow I ran against one of those squids, and I never want to bother with another one. I was mate of a little schooner—the Pearl, she was—150 tons and a crew of six men forward, with the cook. We were bound from the Mauritius to Rangoon in ballast, to return with paddy, and had put in at Galle for water. Three days out we fell becalmed in the bay—about latitude 8 degrees 50 minutes North, longitude 84 degrees 5 minutes East.
“On the 10th of May about five o’clock in the afternoon—eight bells, I know, had gone some time before—we sighted a two masted screw steamer on our port quarter, about five or six miles off. Very soon after, as we lay motionless on a sea like glass, a great mass rose slowly to the surface about half a mile on our larboard side, and remained spread out, as it were, and stationary.
“Even at that distance I could see that it was fully as long as the Pearl, and I sung out to the skipper to ask what he thought it was.
“‘Blest if I know,’ says he. ‘Barring its size, color and shape, it might be a whale. Some deep-sea critter, sure enough,’ and he dove below and came up with a heavy rifle.
“The crew was discussing it, too, and as the skipper was preparing to fire at the thing, Bill Darling, a Newfoundlander, exclaimed, putting up his hand:
“‘Have a care, Skipper. That ere is a squid and it’ll capsize ye if ye hurt him.’
“I’d heard of squid, and seen squid,” proceeded Mr. Hollister, “and so had the skipper. But we both laughed at old Bill. The skipper up with his gun and let her go. He hit the thing, and it shook all over; there was a great ripple all around him and he began to move.
“‘Out with all your axes and knives!’ shouted Bill, ‘and cut at any part of him that comes aboard.’
“The old fellow taking the deck in that way made the skipper mad, and I was some surprised myself. You know how old sailors are—superstitious, as Negroes were in slavery. We couldn’t do anything to move the schooner, of course, and the skipper and I didn’t say a thing to the crew. Bill and the two others got axes and one other a rusty cutlass. We were all looking over the side at the advancing monster; but I for one, didn’t believe it was dangerous.
“We could now see a huge, oblong mass, moving by jerks, just under the surface of the water, and an enormous train following. The oblong body was at least half the size of the Pearl and just as thick. The wake, or trail, might have been a hundred feet long.
“In the time I’ve taken to tell you,” said Mr. Hollister, “the brute struck us and the ship quivered under the thud; I wasn’t scared a mite until then. The skipper gave a yell and plugged away with his rifle another time. And then monstrous arms like trees seized the vessel and she keeled over; in another second the monster was aboard, squeezing its great polypus bulk in between the two masts.
“Bill screamed, ‘Slash for your lives!’ But all our slashing and yelling didn’t do a mite of good. Holding on by his arms, the monster slipped back into the sea again, and dragged the vessel down with him on her beam-ends.
“The skipper and I were thrown into the water. I caught sight of old Bill and one of the others squashed up betwixt the mast and one of them arms. It was an awful sight, I tell you.
“Of course, the Pearl’s hatches were open and in a few moments she filled and went down. Those two went with her. The rest of us escaped the brute’s tentacles and a boat from the Strathowen—the steamer we’d seen—picked us up a little later.
“That was the finish of the Pearl and two brave men,” added Mr. Hollister, gravely. “And she isn’t the only craft that’s been carried down by a giant squid. Most folks I’ve told it to think it’s a sailor’s yarn. But the crew and the passengers of the Strathowen could swear to it—and did so, too. The story was printed in the Indian papers when we reached Madras. And you’ve seen one of the beasts yourself, to-day, and know to what an enormous size they grow. There are dangerous monsters in the sea, Mr. Barney; but I reckon there’s nothing worse than a healthy, full-grown devil-fish.”