Mansuckers.—The three kinds of cuttlefish best known in British seas are, first, the sepia, the creature whose backbone is the ‘cuttlefish’ of the apothecaries’ shops; second, the ‘loligo,’ or ‘calamary,’ that has a beautiful penlike bone, and, from the presence of a bag containing a black fluid, is sometimes called the ‘pen-and-ink’ fish; and third, the ‘octopus.’
The octopus as seen on our coasts, although even here called a ‘mansucker’ by the fishermen, is a mere Tom Thumb, a tiny dwarf, as compared to the Brobdignagian proportions he attains in the snug bays and long inland canals along the east side of Vancouver Island, as well as on the mainland. These places afford lurking-dens, strongholds, and natural sea-nurseries, where the octopus grows to an enormous size, fattens, and wages war, with insatiable voracity, on all and everything it can catch. Safe from heavy breakers, it lives as in an aquarium of smooth lake-like water, that, save in the ebbing and flowing of the tide, knows no change or disturbance.
The ordinary resting-place of this hideous ‘sea-beast’ is under a large stone, or in the wide cleft of a rock, where an octopus can creep and squeeze itself with the flatness of a sand-dab, or the slipperiness of an eel. Its modes of locomotion are curious and varied: using the eight arms as paddles, and working them alternately, the central disc representing a boat, octopi row themselves along with an ease and celerity comparable to the many-oared caïque that glides over the tranquil waters of the Bosporus; they can ramble at will over the sandy roadways intersecting their submarine parks, and, converting arms into legs, march on like a huge spider. Gymnasts of the highest order, they climb the slippery ledges, as flies walk up a window-pane; attaching the countless suckers that arm the terrible limbs to the face of the rocks, or to the wrack and seaweed, they go about, back downward, like marine sloths, or, clinging with one arm to the waving algæ, perform series of trapèze movements that Leôtard might view with envy.
The size, of course, varies. I have seen and measured the arm five feet long, and as large at the base where it joins the central disc as my wrist; and were an octopus by any chance to wind its sucker-dotted cable-arms round a luckless bather, fatal would be the embrace, and horrible to imagine, being dragged down and drowned by this eight-armed monster; a worse death than being crushed by coiling serpents like ill-fated Laocoon.
I have often when on the rocks, in Esquimalt Harbour, watched my friend’s proceedings; the water being clear and still, it is just like peering into an aquarium of huge proportions, crowded with endless varieties of curious sea-monsters; although grotesque and ugly to look at, yet all alike displaying the wondrous works of Creative wisdom. In all the cosy little nooks and corners of the harbour the great seawrack (Macrocystis) grows wildly, having a straight round stem that comes up from the bottom, often with a stalk three hundred feet long; reaching the surface, it spreads out two long tapering leaves that float upon the water: this sea-forest is the favourite hunting-ground of octopi.
I do not think, in its native element, an octopus often catches prey on the ground or on the rocks, but waits for them just as the spider does, only the octopus converts itself into a web, and a fearful web too. Fastening one arm to a stout stalk, stiffening out the other seven, one would hardly know it from the wrack amongst which it is concealed. Patiently he bides his time, until presently a shoal of fish come gaily on, threading their way through the sea-trees, joyously happy, and little dreaming that this lurking monster, so artfully concealed, is close at hand. Two or three of them rub against the arms: fatal touch! As though a powerful electric shock had passed through the fish, and suddenly knocked it senseless, so does the arm of the octopus paralyse its victim; then, winding a great sucker-clad cable round the palsied fish—as an elephant winds its trunk round anything to be conveyed to the mouth—draws the dainty morsel to the centre of the disc, where the beaked mouth seizes, and soon sucks it in.
I am perfectly sure, from frequent observation, the octopus has the power of numbing its prey; and the sucking-discs along each ray are more for the purposes of climbing and holding-on whilst fishing, than for capturing and detaining slippery prisoners. The suckers are very large, and arranged in triple rows along the under-surface of the ray, decreasing in size towards the point, and possessing wonderful powers of adhesion.
As illustrating the size of these suckers, I may as well confess to a blunder I once made. It was an extremely low tide, and I was far out on the rocks at Esquimalt Harbour, hunting the pools, when I saw what I fancied a huge actinia, as big as an eggcup, its tentacles hauled in, and, having detached its disc from the rocks, was waiting for the tide: placing the fancied prize safely in my collecting-box, to my disgust, on examining my new species, it turned out to be only the sucking-disc of an octopus.
Tyrants though they be, an enemy hunts them with untiring pertinacity. The Indian looks upon the octopus as an alderman does on turtle, and devours it with equal gusto and relish, only the savage roasts the glutinous carcase instead of boiling it. His mode of catching octopi is crafty in the extreme, for redskin well knows, from past experience, that were the octopus once to get some of its huge arms over the side of the canoe, and at the same time a holdfast on the wrack, it could as easily haul it over as a child could upset a basket; but he takes care not to give a chance, and thus the Indian secures his prize.
Paddling the canoe close to the rocks, and quietly pushing aside the wrack, the savage peers through the crystal water, until his practised eye detects an octopus, with its great ropelike arms stiffened out, waiting patiently for food. His spear is twelve feet long, armed at the end with four pieces of hard wood, made harder by being baked and charred in the fire: these project about fourteen inches beyond the spear-haft, each piece having a barb on one side, and are arranged in a circle round the spear-end, and lashed firmly on with cedar-bark. Having spied out the octopus, the hunter passes the spear carefully through the water until within an inch or so of the centre disc, and then sends it in as deep as he can plunge it. Writhing with pain and passion, the octopus coils its terrible arms round the haft; redskin, making the side of the canoe a fulcrum for his spear, keeps the struggling monster well off, and raises it to the surface of the water. He is dangerous now; if he could get a holdfast on either savage or canoe, nothing short of chopping off the arms piecemeal would be of any avail.