“The octopus feeds on shell fish—crabs and lobsters,” Dave explained briefly.
“Now,” he breathed, as one long arm encircled the steel clamps. “Now—I wonder what luck.” Once again he worked at levers and small handscrews at his side. The clamp out there in the water half opened, then closed again. This was repeated twice. Then:
“Ah! Got him!” Dave’s voice rose exultantly. Into the phone he whispered, “Doris. Out a little—and then up, at top speed!”
To her astonishment Mildred saw a great mass of twisting arms emerge from the cavern. One by one these arms wound themselves about the steel ball. One of these, a great scaly affair with little suckers on its underside, crossed the window. With a little cry of dismay she shrank back.
“He can’t get to you,” Dave laughed. “Even if he could, he’d be harmless enough, unless he drew you beneath the water and drowned you.
“You see,” he added, “while the octopus was working to get that lobster, I opened the clamps. His arm slipped in, and I closed them. Now he’s making himself comfortable for the ride. It will be a longer ride than you might suppose—all the way to the New York aquarium! And boy! Will he be something to look at! Largest ever captured, I’m sure—and sea-green at that. This being a naturalist is the berries, when things are right. All you have to do—
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “Here we are at the top, already. Now for some work.”
Before making any attempt to get the big-eyed octopus into the ship’s pool for live specimens, Dave assisted Mildred from the ball. When she climbed forth, she felt a cold chill course down her spine. Those great, scaly arms were not a foot from her head. But they did not move.
“Good boy, Dave!” the professor exclaimed half an hour later, as they watched the octopus surveying his prison tank in the Sea Nymph’s hold. “That is a real prize! A few finds like that and we will have more than paid our way.
“I like to think,” he added, quietly, “that we are truly serving the millions of people whose only chance to see rare creatures of land or sea is in the zoos and aquariums.”