As for the booby, whose contemptuous name is surely a libel, space is now far too brief to do anything like justice to its many virtues. In a number of ways it corresponds very closely with the manners of our domestic fowls, notably in its care of its brood, and utter change in its habits when the young ones are dependent upon it. Of stupidity the only evidences really noticeable are its indifference to the approach of generally dreaded dangers when it is drowsy. At night one may collect as many from their resting-places as can be desired, for they make no effort to escape, but look at their enemy with a full, steady eye wherein there is no speculation whatever. Numberless instances might be collected where the tameness, as well as the abundance, of boobies have been the means of preserving human life after shipwreck, while their flesh and eggs are by no means unpalatable. Of several other interesting members of the great family of oceanic birds we have now no room to speak, but hope to return to the subject later on.
XV
THE KRAKEN
Never, within the history of mankind, does there appear to have been a time when dwellers by the sea did not believe in some awful and gigantic monsters inhabiting that unknown and vague immensity.
Whether we turn to Genesis to find great sea-monsters first of created sentient beings, or ransack the voluminous records of ancient civilisations, the result is the same. What a picture is that of the Hindu sage in the Fish Avatar of Krishna, finding himself and his eight companions alone in their ark upon the infinite sea, being visited by the god as an indescribably huge serpent extending a million leagues, shining like the sun, and with one stupendous horn, sky-piercing.
In the brief compass of this chapter I do not propose to réchauffer any sea-serpent stories, ancient or modern. More especially because my subject is the Kraken, and while I hold most firmly that the gigantic mollusc which can alone be given that title is the fons et origo of all true sea-serpent stories, it is with facts relating to the former that I have alone to deal. As might have been expected, all stories of sea-monsters have a strong family likeness, showing pretty conclusively their common derivation, with such differences as the locality and personality of the narrative must be held accountable for. But among sea-folk, as among all people leading lives in close contact with the elemental forces of Nature, legends persist with marvellous vitality, and so the story of the Kraken is to be found wherever men go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters.
Substantially the story is: that long low-lying banks have been discovered by vessels, which have moored thereto, only to find the supposed land developing wondrous peculiarities. Amid tremendous turmoil of seething waters, arms innumerable, like a nest of mighty serpents, arose from the deep, followed at last by a horrible head, of a bigness and diabolical appearance unspeakably appalling. Fascinated by the terrible eyes that, large as shields, glared upon them, the awe-stricken seamen beheld some of the far-reaching tentacles, covered with multitudes of mouths, embracing their vessel, while others searched her alow and aloft, culling the trembling men from the rigging like ripe fruit, and conveying them forthwith into an abysmal mouth where they vanished for ever.
Such a story, especially when embellished by professional story-tellers, has of course met with well-merited scepticism, but sight has been largely lost of the fact that from very early times much independent testimony has been borne to the existence of immense molluscæ in many waters, sufficiently huge and horrific to have furnished a substantial basis for any number of hair-raising yarns. And having myself for some years been engaged in the sperm whale fishery, all over the globe, I now venture to bear the testimony of another eyewitness to the truth of many Kraken legends, however much they may have been, and are now, doubted.
To eager students of marine natural history, nothing can well be stranger than the manner in which, with two or three honourable exceptions, the sperm whale fishers of the world have “sinned their mercies.” To them as to no other class of sea-farers have been vouchsafed not glimpses merely, but consecutive months and years of the closest intimacy with the secret things of old ocean, embracing almost the whole navigable globe. And when, unpressed for time, they have leisurely entered those slumbrous latitudes so anxiously avoided by the hurried, worried merchantman, how utterly have they neglected their marvellous opportunities of observation of the wonders there revealed. It may not be generally known that during long-persisting calms the sea surface changes its character. From limpid blue it becomes greasy and pale, from that health-laden odour to which the gratified nostrils dilate, and the satisfied lungs expand, there is a gruesome change to an unwholesome stench of stagnation and decaying things, such as the genius of Coleridge depicted when he sang:
The very deep did rot; O Christ!