Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

While all land-crabs were safe to eat, certain sea-crabs were injurious, one in particular, a stark-white species, which was death to swallow, and which despairing Paumotuans had bolted as a suicide potion. Even certain starfish must be avoided, one, a lovely cone-shaped kind, being deadly, their barbs injecting a virulent poison which speedily dilated the arm and then the body hugely, and made the heart stop beating. To the native such illnesses were awesome mysteries, yet he had learned ages ago to distinguish the baneful fishes by the empire path of pain and death which all races have trod toward safety from the enemies of mankind. His more open foes, whom he hunted for food, the native met fearlessly, and fought with adroitness.

The devilfish, or octopus, frequented mostly the outside of the reef and preyed on mollusks and crustaceans, being naturally timid and inoffensive, though capable of affrighting attack when molested. They commonly took up their abode in some cavern or crevice, and lay safely ensconced in the shadow, simulating the color of their surroundings so artfully that their victims hardly ever saw them until grasped by the suckers of the many long, muscular arms.

“In Samoa,” said Nohea, when we went to a certain spot to seek out the devilfish, “is the Fale o le Fe’e, the House of the Octopus. It is very large, with black basalt walls, and has a pillar in the center. It was built to guard against the tribe of giants who once traded with Samoa.”

The devilfish was, as I said, at most times shy and harmless but, when roused, the most dangerous of antagonists. We met one at close quarters the third time we paddled to the caves or recesses in the coral rock. It was near sunset, and there were already black shadows about the ledge, which at low tide disclosed the niches wrought in it by the action of the water. In one of these I saw two fiery eyes with white rims as big as dinner-plates, and Nohea said to beware, that they belonged to an enormous fe’e. Nohea had a mighty spear or grain with three points of solid iron, and a heavy, long shaft, on a rope attached to the prow of the canoe. Better still I carried a rifle with bullets that would kill a wild bull. Nohea steered the canoe up to the nook and thrust out a long, light stick toward the glittering eyes. The cuttlefish threw out one tentacle upon it. Nohea teased him as one might tease a cat, and another tentacle took hold. Again the stick was manipulated, and finally, after half an hour, ten arms were fastened tightly upon the rod. Nohea gently drew the rod toward him, and the fe’e emerged from his den, so that, though the light was growing dim, I was able for a minute to survey him in the fullest detail, as I sat with my rifle to my shoulder.

His body, bigger than a barrel, was like a dirty gray bag, with one end three-cornered for use as a steering-fin, or rudder. His mouth was like an opening in a sack, with a thick, circular lip and a great parrot-like beak, which was almost hidden at the moment. His tentacles were in a circle around the mouth, and were large at the trunk and tapering to the ends. Two main arms with which he supported himself against the rock were twice as long as the others, and differently formed. The fiery eyes were serpent-like, and set back of the arms.

“If he were not so strong I would jump on him now that I have his tentacles engaged, and would bite the back of his neck till he died,” said Nohea, with anger. “I have slain many that way. But this one would destroy me in a moment. Once we hooked one by mistake when we were fishing for barracuda from a canoe. My companion hauled him to the side of the canoe, when the octopus threw his arms about him and pulled him into the sea. I sprang after him, and put my thumbs in the eyes of the beast. He moaned and cried, and covered us with his black fluid; but he let go, and fled, blinded.”

The octopus was regarding us with apparent calm. The rod he held was twenty-five feet in length, so that our canoe was more than twenty feet from his eyes. Nohea now agitated the rod, and the fe’e retained his grasp, but began to change from a slaty gray to red, with black mottlings.

“He is enraged,” said Nohea, warningly. “Prepare to shoot if the tavero fails!”

He stood up in the canoe, and, resting the bamboo rod on the gunwale, poised his spear. The devilfish felt the menace of his attitude, and his two longest tentacles began to writhe in the air, as he measured our distance. Then Nohea, with a step back, launched the grain, and with so true an aim that it penetrated the eye of the grisly creature and half unbalanced him. Instantly the air was filled with the cloud of sepia he ejected,—a confession of defeat,—and the terrible arms with their twisting, coiling tips were thrust at us in lightning movements. But Nohea had seized a paddle, and parted us by thirty feet. The fe’e was pulled into the water, but was not yet dead. He struggled as if drowning, the great arms rising and falling upon the surface, and a direful groaning issuing with the bubbles that covered the surface. I fired twice at his bulk seen clearly in the water, and after ten minutes it relaxed utterly. A musky, delicious odor filled the air.

With immense difficulty we brought his abhorrent corpse partly upon the ledge to measure it, and to cut off some of the tentacles for broiling. Nohea said it weighed a thousand pounds, but that he had seen one that weighed two tons, and whose arms stretched seventy feet. The two longest limbs of our octopus were rounded from the body to within two feet of their tips, when they flattened out like blades. Along the edges were rows of suckers, each with a movable membrane across it. When these suckers fastened on an object, the membrane reacted and made a vacuum under each sucker. Nohea explained that wherever the suckers touched one’s flesh it puckered and blistered, and two months would elapse before it healed. He showed me scars upon his own skin. Our octopus had two thousand and more suckers on its tentacles.