The chart now showed that they were far out of the track of all ships and on a lonely sea, so that the becalmed wind-jammer had probably been driven off her course in the same hurricane that menaced them and was likely to be a long time before she got out of her melancholy predicament.
One day Billy, who was leaning over the side, gave a sharp cry and drew back from the bulwarks.
"Come here, fellows—ugh, what an awful-looking thing," he cried.
He pointed down at the sea. The others rushed to his side, and as they gazed into the water, which was as clear as crystal for a considerable depth, they felt like echoing his exclamation of repulsion.
Through the opalescent green overside could be seen a huge shadowy shape slowly settling downward, though from the depth two menacing eyes gleamed upward at the young watchers.
From every side of the creature's round, barrel-like body stretched huge arms covered with myriads of suckers. It looked like some evil spirit of the deep, and the boys estimated the length of its arms as at least twenty-five feet. It slowly waved the long feelers as if in farewell as it sank.
"That there's a devil-fish," proclaimed Ben, who had joined the group as the monster vanished, "some calls 'em octopus, but devil-fish is a better word, to my thinking."
The boys agreed with him.
"Surely that must have been an unusually large one, Ben?" exclaimed Frank, still with the feeling of repulsion with which the monster had imbued him strong upon him.
"A big one," echoed Ben. "Oh, no, not so extra big—though he was sizeable, I'll admit. I've never seen such things myself, but I've heard crews of whalers tell of having been attacked by one of them critters, and sometimes they come back to the ship several men short. Them devil-fish are as ferocious as tigers and many's the poor sponge-diver they have gobbled up."