Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches

by Frank Thomas Bullen

In the same work, too, will be found a most matter-of-fact description and illustration of the meeting of the French corvette Alecton with an immense calamary between Teneriffe and Madeira. This account was furnished by Lieutenant Bayer to the Académie des Sciences, and is evidently a sober record of fact. The monster’s body was hauled alongside, and an attempt was made to secure it by means of a hawser passed round it, but of course, as soon as any strain was put upon the rope, it drew completely through the soft gelatinous carcass, severing it in two. The length of this creature’s body was fifty feet. But M. Figuier is not satisfied; he says that even this account must be taken cum grano salis, so unwilling is he to believe in a monster that would evidently settle the great Kraken and sea-serpent question once for all.

Even Dr. Solander and Mr. Banks, after finding a cuttle six feet long floating upon the sea near Cape Horn, which was quite beyond all their previous experience, could not bring themselves to believe in the existence of any larger. So at the beginning of this century, while people had largely consented to accept the sea-serpent, they would have none of the Kraken or anything which might reasonably explain the persistence of evidence about him. But had these scientific sceptics only taken the trouble to interview the crews of the South Sea whalers, that sailed in such a goodly fleet from our ports during the first half of the century, they must have been convinced that, so far from the Kraken being a myth, he is one of the most substantial of facts, unless, indeed, they believed that all whalemen were in a conspiracy to deceive them on that point.

Any thoughtful observer who has ever seen a school of sperm whales, numbering several hundreds, and understood, from the configuration of their jaws, that they must of necessity feed upon large creatures, can never after feel difficulty in believing that, in order to supply the enormous demand for food made by these whales, their prey must be imposing in size and abundant in quantity.

On my first meeting with the cachalot, on terms of mutual destruction, I knew nothing of his habits, and cared less. But seeing him, when wounded, vomiting huge masses of white substance, my curiosity was aroused, and when I saw that these masses were parts of a mighty creature almost identical in structure with the small squid so often picked up on deck, where it falls in its frantic efforts to escape from dolphins (Coryphæna), albacore, or bonito, my amazement was great. Some of these fragments were truly heroic in size.

Surgeon Beale, in his book on the sperm whale, only credits the cachalot with being able to swallow a man, but with all the respect due to so great a writer, I am bound to say that such masses as I have seen ejected from the stomach of the dying whale could only have entered a throat to which a man was as a pill is to us. We can, however, only speak of what we have seen, and perhaps Dr. Beale had never seen such large pieces ejected.

In an article in Nature of June 4, 1896, I have described an encounter which I witnessed between a gigantic squid and a sperm whale, in the Straits of Malacca, which, as far as I am concerned, has settled conclusively the Kraken and sea-serpent question for me. This terrific combat took place under the full glare of a tropical moon, upon the surface of a perfectly calm sea, within a mile of the ship. Every detail of the struggle was clearly visible through a splendid glass, and is indelibly graven upon my mind. It was indeed a battle of giants—perhaps all the more solemnly impressive from being waged in perfect silence. The contrast between the livid whiteness of the mollusc’s body and the massive blackness of the whale,—the convulsive writhing of the tremendous arms, as, like a Medusa’s head magnified a thousand times, they wound and gripped about the columnar head of the great mammal,—made a picture unequalled in all the animal world for intense interest. The immense eyes, at least a foot in diameter, glared out of the dead white of the head, inky black, appalling in their fixity of gaze. Could we have seen more nearly, and in daylight, we should have also found that the sea was turned from its normal blue into a dusky brown by the discharge of the great cephalopod’s reservoir of sepia, which in such a creature must have been a tank of considerable capacity. Each of those far-reaching arms were of course furnished with innumerable sucking discs, most of them a foot in diameter, and, in addition to the adhering apparatus, provided with a series of claws set round the inner edges of the suckers, large as those of a grizzly bear. Besides the eight arms, there were the two tentacula, double the length of the arms, or over sixty feet long—in fact, about the length of the animal’s body, and quite worthy of being taken for a pair of sea-serpents by themselves. But the whale apparently took no heed of the Titanic struggles of this enormous mollusc. He was busy wielding his mighty jaws, not in mastication, but in tearing asunder the soft flesh into convenient lumps for being swallowed. All around were numerous smaller whales or sharks, joining in the plentiful feast, like jackals round a lion. Every fisherman worth his salt knows how well all fish that swim in the sea love the sapid flesh of the cephalopoda, making it the finest bait known, and in truth it is, and always has been, a succulent dainty, where known, for mankind as well. But it is evident from the scanty number of times that the gigantic cuttle-fish has been reported, that his habitat is well beneath the surface, yet not so far down but that he may be easily reached by the whale, and also find food for his own vast bulk. Probably they prey upon one another. From what we know of the habits of those members of the family who live in accessible waters, it is evident that nothing comes amiss to them in the way of fish or flesh, dead or alive.

The Prince of Monaco, who is a devotee of marine natural history, was fortunate enough to witness some bay whalers at Terceira early this year catching a sperm whale. He and his scientific assistants were alike amazed at seeing the contents of the whale’s stomach ejected before death, but their amazement became hysterical delight when they found that the ejecta consisted of portions of huge cuttle-fish, as yet unknown to scientific classification. The species was promptly named after the Prince, Lepidoteuthis Grimaldii, and a paper prepared and read before the Académie des Sciences at Paris. So profoundly impressed was the Prince with what he had seen, that he at once determined to convert his yacht into a whaler, in order to become better acquainted with these wonderful creatures, so long known to the obtuse and careless whale-fishers. One interesting circumstance noted by the Prince was the number of circular impressions made upon the tough and stubborn substance of the whale’s head, hard as hippopotamus hide, showing the tremendous power exerted by the mollusc as well as his inability to do the whale any harm.

But were I to describe in detail the numerous occasions upon which I have seen, not certainly the entire mollusc, but such enormous portions of their bodies as would justify estimating them as fully as large as the whales feeding upon them, it would become merely tedious repetition.

As I write, comes the news that an immense squid has just been found stranded on the west coast of Ireland, having arms thirty feet in length, a formidable monster indeed.

In conclusion, it may be interesting to know that these molluscs progress, while undisturbed, literally on their heads, with all the eight arms which surround the head acting as feet as well as hands to convey food to the ever-gaping mouth; but when moving quickly, as in flight, or to attack, they eject a stream of water from an aperture in the neck, which drives them backwards at great speed, all the arms being close together. Close to this aperture is the intestinal opening, a strange position truly. Strangest, perhaps, of all is the manner in which some species grow, at certain seasons, an additional tentacle, which, when complete, becomes detached and floats away. In process of time it finds a female, to which it clings, and which it at once impregnates. It then falls off, and perishes. It is probable that the animal kingdom, in all its vast range, presents no stranger method than this of the propagation of species.