A GIANT DISCOVERED--NEW HOME AT WAGTAIL BAY--A STRANGE ADDITION TO THE
SETTLEMENT.
The creature which had so powerfully affected the feelings of the
Irishman was dead; but dead and harmless though it was, it drew forth
from his comrades a shout of intense surprise when they saw it, for it
was no less than a cuttlefish of proportions so gigantic that they felt
themselves in the presence of one of those terrible monsters of the
deep, about which fabulous tales have been told, and exaggerated
descriptions given since the beginning of historical time.
"Av he's not the say-sarpint himself, boys," panted Squill, as he
pointed to him with looks of unmitigated admiration, "sure he must be
his first cousin."
And Squill was not far wrong, for it was found that the monstrous fish
measured fifty-two feet between the extremities of its outspread arms.
Its body was about eight feet long and four feet broad. Its great arms,
of which it had ten radiating from its body, varied in length and
thickness--the longest being about twenty-four feet, and the shortest
about eight. The under sides of these arms were supplied with
innumerable suckers, while from the body there projected a horny beak,
like the beak of a parrot.
"It's wishin', I am, that I might see wan o' yer family alive," said
Squill, as he turned over the dead arms; "but I'd rather not be embraced
by ye. Och! what a hug ye could give--an' as to howldin' on--a thousand
limpets would be nothin' to ye."
"A miser grippin' his gold would be more like it," suggested Grummidge.
"I don't expect ever to see one alive," said Little Stubbs, "an' yet
there must surely be more where that came from."
The very next day Squill had his wish gratified, and Stubbs his unbelief
rebuked, for, while they were out in the boat rowing towards one of the
fishing-banks with several of their comrades, they discovered a living
giant-cuttlefish.
"What's that, boys?" cried the Irishman, pointing to the object which
was floating in the water not far ahead of them.
"Seaweed," growled Blazer.
Blazer always growled. His voice was naturally low and harsh--so was
his spirit. Sometimes a grunt supplanted the growl, suggesting that he
was porcine in nature--as not a few men are.
But it was not seaweed. The thing showed signs of life as the boat drew
near.
"Starboard! starboard hard!" shouted Little Stubbs, starting up.
But the warning came too late. Next moment the boat ran with a thud
into a monster cuttlefish. Grummidge seized a boat-hook, shouted,
"Stern all!" and hit the creature with all his might, while Stubbs made
a wild grasp at a hatchet which lay under one of the thwarts.
Instantly the horny parrot-like beak, the size of a man's fist, reared
itself from among the folds of the body and struck the boat a violent
blow, while a pair of saucer-like eyes, fully four inches in diameter,
opened and glared ferociously. This was terrifying enough, but when, a
moment later, two tremendous arms shot out from the body near the eyes,
flung themselves around the boat and held on tight, a yell of fear
escaped from several of the men, and with good reason, for if the
innumerable suckers on those slimy arms once fairly attached themselves
to the boat there seemed to be no chance of escape from the deadly
embrace. In that moment of danger Little Stubbs proved himself equal to
the occasion. With the hatchet he deftly severed the two limbs as they
lay over the gunwale of the boat, and the monster, without cry or sign
of pain, fell back into the sea, and moved off, ejecting such a quantity
of inky fluid, as it went, that the water was darkened for two or three
hundred yards around.
"Well done, Little Stubbs!" cried Grummidge, as he watched the creature
disappearing. "You've often worried our lives in time past, but this
time you've saved 'em. Coil away the limbs, boys. We'll measure 'em
and enter 'em in the log when we go ashore."
It may interest the reader to know that the measurements were as
follows:--
The longer and thinner arm was nineteen feet in length; about three and
a half inches in circumference; of a pale pinkish colour, and
exceedingly strong and tough. As all the men agreed that more than ten
feet of the arm were left attached to the monster's body, the total
length must have been little short of thirty feet. Towards the
extremity it broadened out like an oar, and then tapered to a fine
tongue-like point. This part was covered with about two hundred
suckers, having horny-toothed edges, the largest of the suckers being
more than an inch in diameter, the smallest about the size of a pea.
The short arm was eleven feet long, and ten inches in circumference. It
was covered on the under side throughout its entire length with a double
row of suckers. Grummidge, who was prone to observe closely, counted
them that night with minute care, and came to the conclusion that the
creature must have possessed about eleven hundred suckers altogether.
There was also a tail to the fish--which Squill called a "divil-fish"--
shaped like a fin. It was two feet in width.
Lest any reader should imagine that we are romancing here, we turn aside
to refer him to a volume entitled _Newfoundland, the oldest British
Colony_, written by Joseph Hatton and the Reverend M. Harvey, in which
(pages 238 to 242) he will find an account of a giant-cuttlefish,
devil-fish, or squid, very similar to that which we have now described,
and in which it is also stated that Mr Harvey, in 1873, obtained
possession of one cuttlefish arm nineteen feet long, which he measured
and photographed, and described in various newspapers and periodicals,
and, finally, sent to the Geological Museum in St. John's, where it now
lies. The same gentleman afterwards obtained an uninjured specimen of
the fish, and it is well known that complete specimens, as well as
fragments, of the giant cephalopod now exist in several other museums.
Can any one wonder that marvellous tales of the sea were told that night
round the fires at supper-time? that Little Stubbs became eloquently
fabulous, and that Squill, drawing on his imagination, described with
graphic power a monster before whose bristling horrors the great
sea-serpent himself would hide his diminished head, and went into
particulars so minute and complex that his comrades set him down as "one
o' the biggest liars" that ever lived, until he explained that the
monster in question had only appeared to him "wance in wan of his owld
grandmother's dreams!"
In fishing, and hunting with bows and arrows made by themselves, as well
as with ingenious traps and weirs and snares of their own invention, the
crew spent their time pleasantly, and the summer passed rapidly away.
During this period the rude tents of spars and sailcloth were supplanted
by ruder huts of round logs, caulked with hay and plastered with mud.
Holes in the walls thereof did service as windows during the day, and
bits of old sails or bundles of hay stuffed into them formed shutters at
night. Sheds were also put up to guard provisions and stores from the
weather, and stages were erected on which to dry the cod-fish after
being split and cleaned; so that our shipwrecked crew, in their new
home, which they named Wagtail Bay, had thus unwittingly begun that
great industry for which Newfoundland has since become celebrated all
the world over.
It is not to be supposed that among such men in such circumstances
everything went harmoniously. At first, indeed, what with having plenty
to do in fishing, hunting, building, splitting and drying fish,
etcetera, all day, and being pretty well tired out at nights, the peace
was kept pretty easily; all the more that Big Swinton had been quelled
and apparently quite subdued. But as the stores became full of food and
the days shortened, while the nights proportionately lengthened, time
began to hang heavy on their hands, and gradually the camp became
resolved into the two classes which are to be found everywhere--the
energetically industrious and the lazily idle. Perhaps we should say
that those two extreme phases of human nature began to show themselves,
for between them there existed all shades and degrees, so that it was
difficult to tell, in some cases, to which class the men belonged.
The proverbial mischief, of course, was soon found, for the latter class
to do, and Grummidge began to discover that the ruling of his subjects,
which sat lightly enough on his shoulders during the summer, became a
matter of some trouble and anxiety in autumn. He also found, somewhat
to his surprise, that legislation was by no means the easy--we might say
free-and-easy--business which he had supposed it to be. In short, the
camp presented the interesting spectacle of a human society undergoing
the process of mushroom growth from a condition of chaotic
irresponsibility to that of civilised order.
The chaotic condition had been growing worse and worse for some time
before Grummidge was forced to take action, for Grummidge was a man of
long-suffering patience. One night, however, he lost all patience, and,
like most patient people when forced out of their natural groove, he
exploded with surprising violence and vigour.