_Describing the Haunts and Habits of Devil-Fish and
Informing the Reader of Billy Topsail's Determination
to Make a Capture at all Hazards_
WHEN the Minister of Justice for the colony of Newfoundland went away
from Ruddy Cove by the bay steamer, he chanced to leave an American
magazine at the home of Billy Topsail's father, where he had passed the
night. The magazine contained an illustrated article on the gigantic
species of cephalopods[2] popularly known as devil-fish.
Billy Topsail did not know what a cephalopod was; but he did know a
squid when he saw its picture, for Ruddy Cove is a fishing harbour, and
he had caught many a thousand for bait. So when he found that to the
lay mind a squid and a cephalopod were one and the same, save in size,
he read the long article from beginning to end, doing the best he could
with the strange, long words.
So interested was he that he read it again; and by that time he had
learned enough to surprise him, even to terrify him, notwithstanding
the writer's assurance that the power and ferocity of the creatures had
generally been exaggerated.
He was a lad of sound common sense. He had never wholly doubted the
tales of desperate encounters with devil-fish, told in the harbour
these many years; for the various descriptions of how the long,
slimy arms had curled about the punts had rung too true to be quite
disbelieved; but he had considered them somewhat less credible than
certain wild yarns of shipwreck, and somewhat more credible than the
bedtime stories of mermaids which the grandmothers told the children of
the place.
Here, however, in plain print, was described the capture of a giant
squid in a bay which lay beyond a point of land that Billy could see
from the window.
That afternoon Billy put out in his leaky old punt to "jig" squid for
bait. He was so disgusted with the punt--so ashamed of the squat,
weather-worn, rotten cast-off--that he wished heartily for a new one
all the way to the grounds. The loss of the _Never Give Up_ had brought
him to humiliating depths.
But when he had once joined the little fleet of boats, he cheerfully
threw his grapnel into Bobby Lot's punt and beckoned Bobby aboard.
Then, as together they drew the writhing-armed, squirting little squids
from the water, he told of the "big squids" which lurked in the deep
water beyond the harbour; and all the time Bobby opened his eyes wider
and wider.
"Is they just like squids?" Bobby asked.
"But bigger," answered Billy. "Their bodies is so big as hogsheads.
Their arms is thirty-five feet long."
Bobby picked a squid from the heap in the bottom of the boat. It had
instinctively turned from a reddish-brown to a livid green, the colour
of sea-water; indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would have
had hard work to see it.
He handled it gingerly; but the ugly little creature managed somehow to
twine its slender arms about his hand, and swiftly to take hold with a
dozen cup-like suckers. The boy uttered an exclamation of disgust, and
shook it off. Then he shuddered, laughed at himself, shuddered again. A
moment later he chose a dead squid for examination.
"Leave us look at it close," said he. "Then we'll know what a real
devil-fish is like. Sure, I've been wantin' to know that for a long,
long time."
They observed the long, cylindrical body, flabby and cold, with the
broad, flap-like tail attached. The head was repulsively ugly--perhaps
because of the eyes, which were disproportionately large, brilliant,
and, in the live squid, ferocious.
A group of arms--two long, slender, tentacular arms, and eight
shorter, thicker ones--projected from the region of the mouth, which,
indeed, was set in the centre of the ring they formed at the roots.
They were equipped with innumerable little suckers, were flexible and
active, and as long as the head, body and tail put together.
Closer examination revealed that there was a horny beak, like a
parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was a
curious tube-like structure.
"Oh, that's his squirter!" Billy explained. "When he wants to back up
he points that forward, and squirts out water so hard as he can; and
when he wants to go ahead he points it backward, and does the same
thing. That's where his ink comes from, too, when he wants to make the
water so dirty nobody can see him."
"What does he do with his beak?"
"When he gets his food in his arms he bites out pieces with his beak.
He hasn't any teeth; but he's got something just as good--a tongue like
a rasp."
"I wouldn't like to be cotched by a squid as big as a hogshead," Bobby
remarked, timidly.
"Hut!" said Billy, grimly. "He'd make short work o' _you_! Why, b'y,
they weighs half a ton apiece! I isn't much afraid, though," he added.
"They're only squid. Afore I read about them in the book I used to
think they was worse than they is--terrible ghostlike things. But
they're no worse than squids, only bigger, and----"
"They're bad enough for _me_," Bobby interrupted.
"And," Billy concluded, "they only comes up in the night or when
they're sore wounded and dyin'."
"I'm not goin' out at night, if I can help it," said Bobby, with a
canny shake of the head.
"If they was a big squid come up the harbour to your house," said
Billy, after a pause, "and got close to the rock, he could put one o'
they two long arms in your bedroom window, and----"
"'Tis in the attic!"
"Never mind that. He could put it in the window and feel around for
your bed, and twist that arm around you, and----"
"I'd cut it off!"
"Anyhow, that's how long they is. And if he knowed you was there, and
wanted you, he could get you. But I'm not so sure that he _would_ want
you. He couldn't see you, anyhow; and if he could, he'd rather have a
good fat salmon."
Bobby shuddered as he looked at the tiny squid in his hand, and thought
of the dreadful possibilities in one a thousand times as big.
"You leave them alone, and they'll leave you alone," Billy went on.
"But if you once make them mad, they can dart their arms out like
lightning. 'Tis time to get, then!"
"I'm goin' to keep an axe in my punt after this," said Bobby, "and if I
sees an arm slippin' out of the water----"
"'Tis as big as your thigh!" cried Billy.
"Never mind. If I sees it I'll be able to cut it off."
"If I sees one," said Billy, "I'm goin' to cotch it. It said in the
book that they was worth a lot to some people. And if I can sell mine
I'm goin' to have a new punt."
But although Bobby Lot and Billy Topsail kept a sharp lookout for giant
squids wherever they went, they were not rewarded. There was not so
much as a sign of one. By and by, so bold did they become, they hunted
for one in the twilight of summer days, even daring to pry into the
deepest coves and holes in the Ruddy Cove rocks.
Notwithstanding the ridicule he had to meet, Bobby never ventured out
in the punt without a sharp axe. He could not tell what time he would
need it, he said; and thus he formed the habit of making sure that it
was in its place before casting off from the wharf.
As autumn drew near they found other things to think of; the big squids
passed out of mind altogether.
"Wonderful queer," Billy said, long afterwards, "how things happen when
you isn't expectin' them!"
FOOTNOTE:
[2] "The early literature of natural history has, from very remote
times, contained allusions to huge species of cephalopods, often
accompanied by more or less fabulous and usually exaggerated
descriptions of the creatures. . . . The description of the 'poulpe,'
or devil-fish, by Victor Hugo, in 'Toilers of the Sea,' with which so
many readers are familiar, is quite as fabulous and unreal as any of
the earlier accounts, and even more bizarre. . . . Special attention
has only recently been called to the frequent occurrence of these 'big
squids,' as our fishermen call them, in the waters of Newfoundland and
the adjacent coasts. . . . I have been informed by many other fishermen
that the 'big squids' are occasionally taken on the Grand Banks and
used for bait. Nearly all the specimens hitherto taken appear to have
been more or less disabled when first observed, otherwise they probably
would not appear at the surface in the daytime. From the fact that
they have mostly come ashore in the night, I infer that they inhabit
chiefly the very deep and cold fiords of Newfoundland, and come to
the surface only in the night."--From the "Report on the Cephalopods
of the Northeastern Coast of America," by A. E. Verrill. Extracted
from a report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, issued by the
Government Printing Office at Washington. In this report twenty-five
specimens of the large species taken in Newfoundland are described in
detail.