Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches

by Frank Thomas Bullen

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

Strangest of all the strange visitors to the upper world at such times is the gigantic squid, or cuttle-fish. Of all the Myriad species of mollusca this monster may fairly claim chief place, and neither in ancient or modern times have any excited more interest than he. Gazing with childlike fear upon his awe-inspiring and uncanny bulk, the ancients have done their best to transmit their impressions to posterity. Aristotle writes voluminously upon the subject, as he did about most things, but his cuttles are such as are known to most of us. Pliny leaves on record much concerning the Sepiadæ which is evidently accurate in the main, mentioning especially (lib. ix. caps. iv. and xxx.) one monster slain on the coast of Spain which was in the habit of robbing the salt-fish warehouses. Pliny caused the great head to be sent to Lucullus, and states that it filled a cask of fifteen amphoræ. Its arms were thirty feet long, so thick that a man could hardly embrace them at their bases, and provided with suckers, or acetabula, as large as basins holding four or five gallons. But those who have leisure and inclination may pursue the subject in the works of Ælian, Paulinus (who describes the monster as a gigantic crab), Bartholinus, Athanasius Kircher, Athenæus, Olaus Magnus, and others. Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, in his Natural History of Norway, has done more than any other ancient or modern writer to discredit reports, essentially truthful, by the outrageous fabrications he tells by way of embellishment of the facts which he received. Least trustworthy of all, he has been in this connection most quoted of all, but here he shall be mentioned only to hold his inventions up to the scorn they so richly deserve.

The gigantic squid is, unlike most of the cephalopoda, a decapod, not an octopod, since it possesses, in addition to the eight branchiæ with which all the family are provided, two tentacula of double their length, having acetabula only in a small cluster at their ends. This fact was noticed by Athanasius Kircher, who describes a large animal seen in the Sicilian seas which had ten rays, or branches, and a body equal in size to that of a whale; which, seeing how wide is the range in size among whales, is certainly not over-definite. Coming down to much later days, we find Denys de Montfort facile princeps in his descriptions of the Kraken (Hist. Nat. de Molluscs, tome ii. p. 284). Unfortunately, his reputation for truthfulness is but so-so, and he is reported to have expressed great delight at the ease with which he could gull credulous people. Still the best of his stories may be quoted, remembering that, as far as his description of the monster is concerned, he does not appear to have exaggerated at all.

He records how he became acquainted with a master mariner of excellent repute, who had made many voyages to the Indies for the Gothenburg Company, by name Jean Magnus Dens. To this worthy, sailing his ship along the African coast, there fell a stark calm, the which he, even as do prudent shipmasters to-day, turned to good account by having his men scrape and cleanse the outside of the vessel, they being suspended near the water by stages for that purpose. While thus engaged, suddenly there arose from the blue placidity beneath a most “awful monstrous,” cuttle-fish, which threw its arms over the stage, and seizing two of the men, drew them below the surface. Another man, who was climbing on board, was also seized, but after a fearful struggle his shipmates succeeded in rescuing him. That same night he died in raving madness. The mollusc’s arms were stated to be at the base of the bigness of a fore-yard (vergue d’un mât de misaine), while the suckers were as large as ladles (cueillier à pot).

One who should have done better—Dr. Shaw, in his lectures—calmly makes of that “fore-yard” a “mizen-mast,” and of the “ladles” “pot-lids,” which may have been loose translation, even as the scraping “gratter” is funnily rendered “raking,” as if the ship’s bottom were a hayfield, but looks uncommonly like editorial expansion, which the story really does not require.

Another story narrated by Denys de Montfort relates how a vessel was attacked by a huge “poulp,” which endeavoured to drag down vessel and all; but the crew, assisted by their patron, St. Thomas, succeeded in severing so many of the monster’s arms from his body that he was fain to depart, and leave them in peace. In gratitude for their marvellous deliverance they caused an ex voto picture to be painted of the terrible scene, and hung in their parish church, for a testimony to the mighty power of the saint.

In the Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society (lxviii. p. 226), Dr. Schewediawer tells of a sperm whale being hooked (sic) which had in its mouth a tentaculum of the Sepia Octopodia, twenty-seven feet long. This was not its entire length, for one end was partly digested, so that when in situ it must have been a great deal longer. When we consider, says the learned doctor, the enormous bulk of the animal to which the tentaculum here spoken of belonged, we shall cease to wonder at the common saying of sailors that the cuttle-fish is the largest in the ocean.

In Figuier’s Ocean World he quotes largely from Michelet, that great authority on the Mollusca, giving at length the latter’s highly poetical description of the vast family of “murderous suckers,” as he terms the cephalopoda.