A few moments later, a large and tempting fish appeared at the surface of the water, and began slowly sinking straight downward in a most curious fashion. The still eyes of the octopus took note at once. They had never seen a fish behave that way before; but it plainly was a fish. A quiver of eagerness passed through the sprawling tentacles, for their owner was already hungry again. But the prize was still too far away, and the tentacles did not move. The curious fish, however, seemed determined to come no nearer, and at last the waiting tentacles came stealthily to life. Almost imperceptibly they drew themselves forward, writhing over the bottom as casually as weeds adrift in a light current. And behind them those two great, inky, impassive eyes, and then the fat, mottled, sac-like body, emerged furtively from under the rock.
The bottom, just at this point, was covered with a close brown weed, and almost at once the body of the octopus and his tentacles began to change to the same hue. When the change was complete, the gliding monster was almost invisible. He was now directly beneath that incomprehensible fish; but the fish had gently risen, so that it was still out of reach. 182
For a few seconds the octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless orbs, and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey; then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart back to his lair.
To his amazement, the prey refused to come. In some mysterious way it managed to hold itself—or was held—just where it was. Amazement gave way to rage. The monster wrapped his prize in three more tentacles, and then plunged his beak into it savagely. The next instant he was jerked to the surface of the water. A blaze of fierce sun blinded him, and strong meshes enclosed him, binding and entangling his tentacles.
In such an appalling crisis most creatures of sea or land would have been utterly demoralized by terror. Not so the octopus. Maintaining undaunted the clutch of one tentacle upon his prize, he turned the others, along with the effectual menace of his great beak, to the business of battle. The meshes fettered him in a way that drove him frantic with rage, but two of his tentacles managed to find their way through, and writhed madly 183 this way and that in search of some tangible antagonist on which to fasten themselves. While they were yet groping vainly for a grip, he felt himself lifted bodily forth into the strangling air, and crowded—net, prey, and all—into a dark and narrow receptacle full of water.
This fate, of course, was not to be tamely endured. Though he was suffocating in the unnatural medium, and though his great, unwinking eyes could see but vaguely outside their native element, he was all fight. One tentacle clutched the rim of the metal vessel; and one fixed its deadly suckers upon the bare black arm of a half-seen adversary who was trying to crowd him down into the dark prison. There was a strident yell. A sharp, authoritative voice exclaimed: “Look out! Don’t hurt him! I’ll make him let go!” But the next instant the frightened darky had whipped out a knife and sliced off a good foot of the clutching tentacle. As the injured stump shrank back upon its fellows like a spade-cut worm, the other tentacle was deftly twisted loose from its hold on the rim, and the captive felt himself forced down into the narrow prison. A cover was clapped on, and he found himself in darkness, with his prey still gripped securely. 184 Upset and raging though he was, there was nothing to be done about it, so he fell to feasting indignantly upon the prize for which he had paid so dear.
CHAPTER II
Left to himself, the furious prisoner by and by disentangled himself from the meshes of the net, and composed himself as well as he could in his straitened quarters. Then for days and days thereafter there was nothing but tossing and tumbling, blind feeding, and uncomprehended distress; till at last his prison was turned upside down and he was dropped unceremoniously into a great tank of glass and enamel that glowed with soft light. Bewildered though he was, he took in his surroundings in an instant, straightened his tentacles out before him, and darted backwards to the shelter of an overhanging rock which he had marked on the floor of the tank. Having backed his defenceless body under that shield, he flattened his tentacles anxiously among the stones and weeds that covered the tank-bottom, and impassively stared about.
It was certainly an improvement on the black hole from which he had just escaped. Light came down through the clear water, but a cold, white light, little like the green and gold 186 glimmer that illumined the slow tide in his Caribbean home. The floor about him was not wholly unfamiliar. The stones, the sand, the colored weeds, the shells,—they were like, yet unlike, those from which he had been snatched away. But on three sides there were white, opaque walls, so near that he could have touched them by stretching out a tentacle. Only on the fourth side was there space—but a space of gloom and inexplicable moving confusion from which he shrank. In this direction the floor of sand and stones and weeds ended with a mysterious abruptness; and the vague openness beyond filled him with uneasiness. Pale-colored shapes, with eyes, would drift up, sometimes in crowds, and stare in at him fixedly. It daunted him as nothing else had ever done, this drift of peering faces. It was long before he could teach himself to ignore them. When food came to him,—small fish and crabs, descending suddenly from the top of the water,—at such times the faces would throng tumultuously in that open space, and for a long time the many peering eyes would so disconcert him as almost to spoil his appetite. But at last he grew accustomed even to the faces and the eyes, and disregarded them as if they were so much passing seaweed, borne by 187 the tide. His investigating tentacles had shown him that between him and the space of confusion there was an incomprehensible barrier fixed, which he could see through but not pass; and that if he could not get out, neither could the faces get in to trouble him.