STURGEON-SPEARING—MANSUCKER—CLAMS.
The Sturgeon found in North-western waters differs only in some
unimportant specific distinctions from the one living in the pond of
the Zoological Society’s Gardens, in the Regent’s Park. _Accipenser
transmontanus_ is the name given by Sir J. Richardson to sturgeon that
frequent rivers that flow into the St. Lawrence, on the east side of
the Rocky Mountains, but unknown in streams that fall into the Arctic
Ocean. On the western side sturgeon abound in the Columbia, Fraser, and
most other rivers as far north as lat. 53° N. It is certainly not a
handsome fish to look at, reminding one of a shark in armour; yet, clad
as he is from head to tail in bony mail, every movement is easy and
graceful.
_Sp. Ch._—Five rows of plates encase the body: the row along the
back is most prominent, and contains fifteen shields. The cheeks are
flat, the snout terminating in an acute point, remarkably flexible
and trunklike in its movements. Four barbels dangle from beneath the
snout, situated about mid-distance between its point and the orbit.
The mouth is underneath, resembling a huge flabby sucker in the
freshly-caught fish. Nevertheless, as his habit is to prowl about the
mud and gravel at the bottom, it is in reality the very best kind of
mouth that could have been given. The barbels that hang before are
clearly delicate feelers, intended to give warning, that game suitable
for food—disturbed probably by the flexible nose—is near; the nose
is employed to stir up the mud, turn over stones, or in exploring
the hiding-places of prey amidst the rocks and heavy boulders. The
eyes are small and golden-yellow in the newly-caught fish, but change
immediately after death.
The great extent and strength of the pectorals, which are nearly
horizontal, show us that, in addition to their acting as oars and
rudder, they are also powerful assistants in bringing the great fleshy
mouth to bear upon anything discovered by the barbels. Female fish are
taken full of roe in the Fraser during the month of June, and sometimes
later; but where they deposit the ova or what becomes of the young
after leaving the eggs, are mysteries. I never saw a small sturgeon,
but have no doubt most of the young fish descend to the sea, although
it is equally certain numbers remain entirely in the fresh-water.
Madame Sturgeon’s family is by no means a small one: a bushel of eggs
is not an unusual quantity for a female fish to yield; a great many
thousands, although I do not know how many eggs a bushel contains.
The Indians dry these eggs in the sun and devour them with oil, as we
eat currants and cream. It would surely pay to prepare cauiare on the
Russian plan, even to send it to the English market. A rough kind of
isinglass was at one time prepared by the Fraser river Indians and
traded by the Hudson’s Bay Company, but even that branch of industry
has ceased to flourish since the ‘Golden Age.’ Indians are exceedingly
fond of sturgeon-flesh, and usually demand a high price for it.
Few fish have a wider geographical range than sturgeon. On our own
coasts, we find them frequenting the mouths of rivers and muddy
estuaries. When caught in the Thames, within the jurisdiction of the
lord mayor of London, it is considered a royal fish; implying, that
the fish ought to be sent to the king, though how far the sovereign’s
rights in the matter are actually considered, seems to be somewhat
doubtful. It is said, however, that the sturgeon was exclusively
reserved for the table of the king in the time of Henry I.
In the Fraser and Columbia rivers, and in all the streams of any
magnitude from latitude 46°19´ N. to Sitka, latitude 53° N., the
sturgeon is found abundantly; as also in Northern Asia, where it
forms an article of vast commercial value, the well-known and
much-prized caviare being made from its roe, and that almost
indispensable household necessary, isinglass, from its air-bladder.
The long ligamentous cord, traversing the entire length of the spine,
constitutes another delicacy, called _vesiga_, much relished by the
Russians. The flesh also is eaten, cooked in various ways, and held in
no mean estimation. Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Greece (especially the
two latter) are great markets for caviare.
Pliny speaks of the sturgeon as being in great repute among the Greeks
and Romans: ‘the cooked fish was decked with garlands, as were the
slaves who carried it to table;’ and altogether it was an affair of
great pomp and ceremony, when a sturgeon was to be demolished.
Sturgeon arrive in the Columbia early in February, and a little later
in the Fraser, although a great number above the Kettle Falls, at Fort
Colville, must remain permanently in the fresh-water. They ascend the
rivers to incredible distances, in the Fraser as high as Fraser Lake,
quite up in the Rocky Mountains. In the Columbia sturgeon have been
taken eight hundred miles above the Kettle Falls, which are, speaking
roughly, eighteen hundred miles from the sea, and, in accomplishing
this, several very serious obstacles have to be overcome. Up the Snake
river, at the great Shoshonee Falls (a salmon-station of the Snake
Indians), sturgeon are often taken. The Snake river, tributary to the
Columbia, is about fourteen hundred miles from the sea.
One would never imagine a fish clad in stiff unyielding armour could
ascend rapid torrents and leap falls that puzzle even the lissom salmon
but the strength of the sturgeon is immense, and the power it can exert
with the tail would be almost incredible to those, who have never
seen the rapid twists, plunges, and other performances this fish goes
through, when it has a barbed hook in the jaws, or a spear between the
joints of its mail.
The first glance at a sturgeon would lead any one accustomed to fish,
to decide at once that it must be a ground-feeder: the form and
position of the mouth, the lengthened snout, the barbels, the ventral
fins so far back, the large size of the pectorals—as I have already
stated—all clearly evidence a habit of grubbing-up food of various
kinds near the bottom, and browsing off shelled molluscs adhering to
sticks or stones. They also indulge in small fish: eulachon are oily
dainties they seem particularly to appreciate; and the Indians say
sturgeon are never so fat and good as in ‘eulachon time.’ Small blame
to the sturgeon for appreciating such delicious fish.
During the time the Fraser and Columbia rivers are rising,—and the
rise is very rapid, about thirty feet above the winter level, owing
to the melting snow,—sturgeon are continually leaping. As you are
paddling quietly along in a canoe, suddenly one of these monsters
flings itself into the air many feet above the surface of the water,
falling back again with a splash, as though a lit rock had been pitched
into the river by some Titan hand. It appears to be only play, as they
never leap for insect-food; neither have I ever observed them do it
during low-water; perhaps the intense cold of the snow-water begets a
desire for exercise.
The systems of catching sturgeon in use amongst the Indians of the
Fraser and Columbia rivers are widely different, as indeed are all
their modes of taking fish. This mainly arises from the fact of the
Columbia river having numerous deep falls, that impede the ascent of
all fish going up to spawn. These falls, as I have said, are quite
impassable for even the salmon until the snow-water floods the river.
The Fraser, on the other hand, offers no hindrance at all until after
Fort Hope is passed, and the principal Indian fishing-stations are all
below this point: hence it is that on the Columbia, the fish, both
salmon and sturgeon, are speared, trapped in baskets or weirs, and the
sturgeon also taken with hook and line whereas, on the Fraser, salmon
are principally taken in nets, and sturgeon speared.
I shall first describe the mode adopted by the Indians of the Columbia
to catch sturgeon with hook and line. The best months for fishing are
February and March, and the time of day either early in the morning, or
late in the evening. The Dalles is a favourite fishing-station.
The first thing is to prepare the bait. The old wooden fish-hook is
now amongst the things that _were_, its place having been supplied by
its civilised Birmingham brother, bartered by the Indians from the
Hudson’s Bay Company. The fishing line is either made of native hemp,
or the inside bark of the cypress-tree spun into cord. The bait is a
long strip cut from the underside of a trout, at one end of which the
point of the hook is inserted; the strip being then wound tightly and
evenly round the hook, and up the line about three inches, the silvery
side outermost. It is then firmly whipped over with white horsehair,
a pebble slung on as a sinker, and the deception is complete. Five or
six long barbed spears are stowed away in the canoe, the line coiled
carefully in the bow, and the baited hook laid on it. Two wily redskins
man this frail bark, the paddler squatting on his heels in the stern,
the line-man standing in the bow.
A few skilful turns of the paddle sends the canoe to the mudbank on
which King Sturgeon is dozing, and awaiting his matin or vesper meal.
The dainty-looking morsel, bearing all the external semblance to a fish
(but, like the Trojan horse, pregnant with mischief), sinks noiselessly
and slowly to the bottom; the canoe drifts with the current, and in
this manner the bait is towed along; it nears the sturgeon’s nose,
and, being far too tempting to be refused, the great pendulous lips
close upon it; but ere it reaches the gullet, a sharp twitch of the
line buries the hook in the tenacious gristle. At once discovering he
has been miserably done, anger and obstinate resistance are in the
ascendant; so he comes to the surface with a rush and a splash.
The paddler now exerts all his skill to keep a slack line, for the
hooked fish would otherwise inevitably upset the canoe; the bowman,
with the line in one hand and a spear poised in the other, quietly
bides his time; then he hurls the spear into the sturgeon’s armour-clad
back; down darts the fish, but soon returns to the surface, when in
goes another spear, and so on again and again, until, towed ashore, it
is dragged out of the water with a powerful gaff-hook. Large numbers
besides such as are thus speared are netted in passing through the
narrow rock-channels.
On the Fraser river sturgeon-spearing is the most exciting sport
imaginable. Hooking, playing, and landing a noble salmon is an
achievement every fisherman is truly proud of; but I unhesitatingly
assert that to spear and land a sturgeon five or six hundred pounds
in weight, with only a frail canoe, which the slightest inequality of
balance will upset in an instant, requires a degree of skill, courage,
and dexterity that only a lifetime’s practice can bestow.
I have already said the Fraser has no falls below Fort Hope, but a
great many stiff rapids; below these rapids it widens out into long
slowly-running shallows, generally speaking having large sand and
gravel-banks—_bars_, as the miners call them, and on these bars the
Indians live during the fishing-season. The time for fishing being
generally soon after sunrise, four canoes, each manned by two Indians,
usually start for sturgeon-capture; the paddler, who squats in the
stern, looks in the direction in which the canoe is to go, not, as we
sit in rowing, with our backs to the bow, but facing it; he is always
chosen for his greater strength, tact, and dexterity with the paddle,
for on his skill depends in a great degree the safety and success of
the spearman.
The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable spear—the
handle,[6] from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of white pine
wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point, in shape very
much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather represented by a
piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp at the end. This is so
contrived that it can be easily detached from the long handle by a
sharp dexterous jerk. To this barbed contrivance a long line is made
fast, which is carefully coiled away close to the spearman, like a
harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
[Illustration: STURGEON-SPEARING ON THE FRASER.]
The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of the
stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current, each
spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear, constant
practice having taught the crafty savages to know a sturgeon’s back
when the spear comes in contact with it. The spear-head touches the
drowsy fish—a sharp plunge, and the redskin sends the notched points,
through armour and cartilage, deep into the leather-like muscles. A
skilful jerk frees the long handle from the barbed end, which remains
inextricably fixed in the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line
seized, and the struggle begins.
The first impulse is to resist this objectionable intrusion, so the
angry sturgeon comes up to see what it all means: this curiosity is
generally repaid by having a second spear sent crashing into him. He
then takes a header, seeking safety in flight, and the real excitement
commences. With might and main the bowman plies the paddles, and
the spearman pays out line, the canoe flying through the water. The
slightest tangle, the least hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in
fact, a sheer trial of paddle _versus_ fin. Twist and turn as the
sturgeon may, all the canoes are with him: he flings himself out of the
water, dashes through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but
all is vain—the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
to escape as a cat follows a mouse.
Gradually the sturgeon grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on
the surface. The savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a
chance for revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly
on upon him, to get another spear in. It is done—and down viciously
dives the sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
grow weaker and weaker, as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
dusky native in his frail canoe.
THE CLAM.—Amongst the edible shellfish found on the coasts of
Vancouver Island and British Columbia, the Great Clam, as it is there
styled (_Lutraria maxima_), or the Otter-shell of conchologists, is
by far the most valuable. Clams are one of the staple articles of
winter food on which all Indian tribes in a great measure depend who
inhabit the north-west coast of America. The clam to the Indians is
a sort of molluscous cereal, that they gather and garner during the
summer months; and an outline sketch of this giant bivalve’s habits and
style of living, how captured, and what becomes of it after being made
a prisoner, may be interesting; its habits, and the uses to which, if
not designed, it is at least appropriated, being generally less known
than its minute anatomy. Clams attain an immense size; I have measured
shells eight inches from the hinge to the edge of the valve. We used
them as soap-dishes at our headquarters on Vancouver Island.
The clam has a very wide range, and is thickly distributed along the
mainland and Vancouver Island coasts; his favourite haunts are the
great sandbanks, that run out sometimes over a mile from the shore.
The rise and fall of the tide is from thirty to forty feet, so that at
low-water immense flats or beaches, consisting of mud and sand, are
laid bare.
There is nothing poetical about the clam, and its habits are anything
but clean; grovelling in the mud, and feeding on the veriest filth it
can find, appears to constitute the great pleasure of its life; the
stomach is a kind of dusthole, into which anything and everything finds
ready admission. Its powers of digestion must be something wonderful; I
believe clams could sup on copper tacks, and not suffer from nightmare.
Spending the greater part of its time buried about two feet deep, the
long syphon, reaching to the surface, discovers its whereabouts, as the
ebbing tide leaves the mud, by continually squirting up small jets of
water, about six or eight inches high. The sand flats dry, out marches
an army of squaws (Indian women), as it is derogatory to the dignity
of a man to dig clams. With only a small bit of skin or cedar-mat tied
round the waist, the women tramp through the mud, a basket made from
cedar-root in one hand, and in the other a bent stick about four feet
long.
Thus armed, they begin to dig up the mud-homes of the unsuspecting
clam: guided by the jets of water, they push down the bent stick, and
experience has taught them to make sure of getting it well under the
shell: placing a stone behind the stick, against which the squaw fixes
her foot firmly, she lifts away: the clam comes from darkness into
daylight ere he knows it, and thence into the Indian’s basket. The
basket filled, the clam-pickers trudge back again to the lodge—and
next to open him. He is not a _native_ to be astonished with an
oyster-knife; once having shut his mouth, no force, saving that of
dashing his shell into atoms, will induce him to open it. But the wily
redskin, if she does not know the old fable of the wind and the sun
trying their respective powers on the traveller, at least adopts the
same principle on the luckless clam; what knife and lever fail to do a
genial warmth accomplishes. The same plan the sun adopted to make the
traveller take off his coat (more persuasive, perhaps, than pleasant)
the Indian squaw has recourse to in order to make the clam open his
shell.
Hollowing out a ring in the ground, about eight inches deep, they
fill the circle with large pebbles, made red-hot in the camp-fire
near by, and on these heated stones put the bivalve martyr. The heat
soon finds its way through the shelly armour, the powerful ropes that
hold the doors together slacken, and, as his mansion gradually grows
‘too hot to hold him,’ the door opens a little for a taste of fresh
air. Biding her chance, armed with a long, smooth, sharp-pointed
stick, sits the squaw—dusky, grim, and dirty—anxiously watching the
clam’s movements. The stronghold opens, and the clam drinks draught
after draught of the cool lifegiving air; then down upon him the
savage pounces, and astonishes his heated and fevered imagination by
thrusting, with all her force, the long sharp stick into the unguarded
house: crash it goes through the quivering tissues; his chance is over!
Jerked off the heated stones, pitilessly his house is forced open;
ropes, hinges, fastenings crack like pack-thread, and the mollusc is
ruthlessly dragged from his shelly home, naked and lifeless.
Having got the clam out, the next thing is to preserve it for winter:
this is effectually accomplished by stringing-up and smoking. A long
wooden needle, with an eye at the end, is threaded with cord made
from native hemp; and on this the clams are strung like dried apples,
and thoroughly smoked, in the interior of the lodge. A more effectual
smoking-house could hardly be found. I can imagine nothing in the
‘wide, wide world’ half as filthy, loathsome, and disgusting as the
interior of an Indian house. Every group has some eatable—fish,
mollusc, bird, or animal—and what the men and squaws do not consume,
is pitched to the dusky little savages, that, naked and dirty, are
thick as ants in a hill; from these the residue descends to the dogs,
and what they leave some lower form of animal life manages to consume.
Nothing eatable that is once brought in is ever by any chance swept,
or carried, out again, and either becomes some other form of life, or,
decomposing, assumes its elemental condition.
An old settler once told me a story, as we were hunting together, and
I think I can vouch for the truth of what he related, of having seen a
duck trapped by a clam:—‘You see, sir, as I was a-cruising down these
flats about sun-up, the tide jist at the nip, as it is now, I see a
whole pile of shoveller ducks snabbling in the mud, and busy as dogfish
in herring-time; so I creeps down, and slap I lets ’em have it: six on
’em turned over, and off went the pack gallows-scared, and quacking
like mad. Down I runs to pick up the dead uns, when I see an old
mallard a-playing up all kinds o’ antics, jumping, backing, flapping,
but fast by the head, as if he had his nose in a steel trap; and when
I comes up to him, blest if a large clam hadn’t hold of him, hard and
fast, by the beak. The old mallard might a’ tried his darndest, but may
I never bait a martin-trap again if that clam wouldn’t a’ held him agin
any odds ’til the tide run in, and then he’d a’ been a gone shoveller
sure as shooting; so I cracked up the clam with the butt of my old gun,
and bagged the mallard.’
Any one who has travelled in America must have eaten clam-chowder, or,
more probably perhaps, tried to eat it. It is a sort of intermediate
affair between stew-proper and soup. How it is made I do not know, but
I do know that to my palate it is the vilest concoction I ever tasted;
and I always look upon a man who can eat clam-chowder with a kind of
admiration almost akin to envy; for I feel and know that if he can eat
chowder, short of cannibalism he can eat anything. I have tried smoked
clam, but that I cannot say I enjoy; it is remarkably like chewing good
old tarry ropeyarn, and, save the slight difference in nutritive power,
about an equally agreeable repast.
If any of my readers should be curious to see the shells of these
monster clams, they will find many I have recently brought home in the
Shell Room of the British Museum.
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.
But the wily redskin knows all this, and has taken care to have ready
another spear unbarbed, long, straight, smooth, and very sharp, and
with this he stabs the octopus where the arms join the central disc.
I suppose the spear must break down the nervous ganglions supplying
motive power, as the stabbed arms lose at once strength and tenacity;
the suckers, that a moment before held on with a force ten men could
not have overcome, relax, and the entire ray hangs like a dead snake,
a limp, lifeless mass. And thus the Indian stabs and stabs, until the
octopus, deprived of all power to do harm, is dragged into the canoe, a
great, inert, quivering lump of brown-looking jelly.