During a Saturday night’s chat with some Sussex fishermen with whom I had often before held pleasant conversation on matters appertaining to their craft, cuttle-fishes, sometimes called by sailors “ink-spewers,” were mentioned, and one of the party related the following adventure of a shipmate who was present. I must tell it in his own language.

“We was out fishin’ one quiet night,” he said, “and had just got our trawl awash, and was a-goin’ to hand it in-board, when Bill, here, all of a sudden lets go his holt, roars out like a stuck pig—“Oh-h-h!—What the —— is that?” and tumbles back’ards into an empty fish-basket. We hadn’t no time to ’tend to him till we’d got our haul on deck, but I guessed what was up; and when we looked round we pretty near split our sides with laughing. There was Bill a-leanin’ back agin the skiff, wipin’ his eyes, to get some muck out of ’em, as he said made ’em smart, and his face for all the world as if Davy Jones had emptied a tar-barrel on his head, and he looking as doleful as a schoolboy as has upset the inkstand over his hands and smeared his face with it in rubbin’ the tears away while he was a-crying for fear the master’d lick him. Well, sir, it were one o’ them scuttles as we’re talkin’ about as we’d brought up, and they can shoot straight and no mistake. It’s my opinion as Mr. Scuttle sighted Bill’s nose as soon as he come atop of the water and aimed right at it; for you can see, sir, as Bill’s nose looms as red as Beachy Head Light in a fog, and any scuttle as misses it must be a fool. Bill won’t forget that dose of ink for a good while yet—will ’ee, old man?”

Bill is very good natured, and joined heartily in the laugh elicited by the anecdote. The worthy fellow might have retorted that he had seen his friend’s face, and those of half the population of his neighbourhood simultaneously blackened, if not by a cuttle-fish, by an equally singular accident.

In the autumn of 1872, an American full-rigged ship, bound to London, went ashore in Seaford Bay, in consequence of the captain mistaking the lights and (believing himself further up Channel) pointing her head N.E. before he ought to have done so. The vessel was lightly built—a mere bandbox of a craft—and, after beating and thumping for a short time close in shore, she became a total wreck. The masts went by the board, and, as she broke up, the sewing-machines, metal pails, and other “Yankee notions” with which she had been laden, were rolled and tumbled on the beach by the breakers in a pitiable condition and sad confusion. Amongst her cargo were a hundred casks of lamp-black; and at intervals one and another of these would burst with a crash, and the contents fly out in clouds, like smoke from a gun. The soft impalpable powder did not mix readily with the water, and was carried to the shore and inland by the strong sea-breeze. The coast-guards’ white buildings gradually assumed the hue of the inside of a boiler-flue; the beach, the grass, and the roads in the vicinity looked as if fifty thousand chimney-sweeps had emptied their soot-bags over them; and the stuff fell lightly and gently, like a dust shower, over the throng of anxious spectators, until the ladies appeared as if they were dressed in deep mourning for the catastrophe, and the faces of all, moistened by the salt spray, and bespattered and powdered with the subtle material, became as black as a negro’s, and as shiny as a well-blacked stove. A visitor arriving suddenly amongst them, without access to a looking-glass, might well have believed that he had discovered a colony of panic-stricken Christy minstrels. The sublime, the sorrowful, and the ridiculous have, perhaps, never been more intimately blended than in that scene of dashing, foaming breakers, tossed and battered wreckage, and smutted faces. Even Denys De Montfort’s “colossal poulpe,” which he described as deluging a ship from its syphon tube, would not have had an ink-bag large enough to produce such an effect by its contents.

CHAPTER IX.
ECONOMIC VALUE OF CUTTLE-FISHES.

I will now try to answer M. Hugo’s question concerning “these blasphemies of creation against itself”—“Of what use are such creatures? What purpose do they serve?”

It must not be supposed that in mentioning a few facts relative to their economic value to mankind I consent to the narrow and conceited doctrine that, either by laws fixed from the beginning, or by successive fiats of creation, they were especially provided for the future advantage of the human race. Many genera of them, which formed no unimportant portion of the fauna of the ancient seas, lived and died, and their families became extinct, ages upon ages before man’s appearance on the earth. He has, it is true, utilised them to a certain extent, and in various ways. In some parts of the world they are a recognised addition to the food supply of the population; and, in others, the means by which fishes more valuable than themselves are obtained, and become marketable produce. But that this is the sole object of their being, I cannot for a moment suppose; and therefore I am content to believe that the Great Architect of the Universe made them and all things for Himself, and that for His pleasure they are and were created.

Although the cephalopods are seldom eaten in Great Britain, they are appreciated as food by nearly all other maritime nations. Along the western coast of France, and in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and Adriatic, they form a portion of the habitual sustenance of the people, and are regularly exposed for sale in the markets, both in a fresh and dried condition. Salted cuttles and octopus are there eaten during Lent as commonly as salted cod are brought to table in England on Good Friday; and, thus prepared, generally form a portion of the provisions supplied to the Greek fishing boats and coasters.[23] The Indians of North-Western America look upon them as the proverbial alderman regards turtle, and devour them with the same gusto and relish; only the savage roasts the glutinous carcase, instead of making soup of it. In Chili, Peru, Brazil, and Teneriffe, they are eagerly sought for; and they are an article of daily consumption in India and China, and especially in Japan, where there is a very important trade in them. Professor Edward Forbes[24] relates his experience of the use of them by the Greeks:—

“The traveller who, when treading the shores of the coasts and islands of the Ægean, observes, as he can scarcely fail to do, the innumerable remains of the hard parts of cuttle-fishes piled literally in heaps along the sands—or, when watching the Greek fishermen draw their nets, marks the number of these creatures mixed up with the abundance of true fishes taken and equally prized as articles of food by the captors—can at once understand why the naturalists of ancient Greece should have treated so fully of the history of the cephalopoda, and its poets have made allusions to them as familiar objects. One of the most striking spectacles at night on the coasts of the Ægean is to see the numerous torches glancing along the shores, and reflected by the still and clear sea, borne by poor fishermen paddling as silently as possible over the rocky shallows in search of the cuttle-fish, which, when seen lying beneath the waters in wait for his prey, they dexterously spear, ere the creature has time to dart with the rapidity of an arrow from the weapon about to transfix his soft but firm body. As in ancient times, these molluscs constitute, now, a valuable part of the food of the poor, by whom they are chiefly used. We can ourselves bear testimony to their excellence. When well beaten, to render the flesh tender, before being dressed, and then cut up into morsels and served in a savoury brown stew, they make a dish by no means to be despised, excellent in both substance and flavour. A modern Lycian dinner, in which stewed cuttle-fish formed the first, and roast porcupine the second course, would scarcely fail to be relished by an unprejudiced epicure in search of novelty.”