Children of the Wild

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

Here he paused impressively, as if to lure the Babe on. But into the latter's head popped so many questions all together, at the mention of a creature with so strange a name, that for the moment he could not for the life of him get any one of them into words. He merely gasped. And Uncle Andy, delighted with this apparent self-restraint, went on graciously.

"You're improving a lot," said he. "You're getting quite a knack of holding your tongue. Well, you're going to know all about it in half a minute.

"Little Sword caught sight of a queer, watery-pinkish, speckled creature on the bottom, just crossing a space of clear sand. It was about twice as long as himself, with a pair of terrible big, ink-black eyes, and a long bunch of squirming feelers growing out of its head like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet. He noticed that two of these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him a matter of the least importance. But he noticed at the same time that the creature looked soft and good to eat. The next instant, like a ray of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.

"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in time. His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from beneath his beaked mouth. The black jet spread instantly in a thick cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky anemones, shearing them from their base.

"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness. But that enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes of the young swordfish could make out nothing. Little Sword, emerging into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.

"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried him fifty feet from the spot. To his horrified amazement he did not go as many inches, nor the half of it! And then another something, small but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.

"Then the black, murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw what had happened. The pale creature, having reached a rock to which he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned savagely upon his rash assailant. Little Sword was the prisoner of those two longer tentacles. They were trying to drag him down within reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of hideous snakes."

"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder. "But how did they hold on to him?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and which stick where they strike. Only these suckers could hold on, I can tell you, so fast that you could never have pulled off even the littlest of them.

"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and realized that he had made a great mistake. But he was game all through. It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any odds. Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened and shut as if impatient to get hold of him. This sight was calculated to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his flesh.