THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT.
Bearing in mind that the famous story of “The Toilers of the Sea”
should be regarded as a romance and not as a scientific treatise, I
will now endeavour to compare the “devil-fish” of the author with
the octopus of nature, and to indicate the points on which M. Hugo’s
representation of his “monster” is either substantially correct,
partly true, or entirely unreal.
His description of the seizure of Gilliatt by the _pieuvre_ shows
that he was tolerably well acquainted with its habits, mode of
attack, and external form. The half terrifying, half disgusting
grasp of one of the animal’s sucker-furnished arms, “supple as
leather, tough as steel, cold as night;” the issuing of a second from
the crevice, “like a tongue from out a mouth,” and the successive
application of a third, fourth, and fifth, to various parts of his
body, whilst the other three retained firm hold of the rock, is
powerfully, and, so far, correctly, depicted, if highly-coloured.
And, although, when the octopus desires to alter the position of
the suckers and to change its hold, it generally effects that by an
instantaneous relaxation and renewal of the suction, by protrusion
or retraction of the muscular piston within each, yet the gliding
of the cupping discs over the surface of a man’s wet skin is also
in accordance with possibility, for I have tested it with a living
octopus on my own arm. This will be easily understood by anyone who
has watched the movements of the entomostracous parasites of fishes.
The so-called river-louse, _Argulus foliaceus_, which infests all
freshwater fishes, can run over their scales without loosening the
hold of the two great suckers with which it is furnished; and others
which, like _Caligus_ and _Lepeotheirus_, have a water-tight carapace
with a flexible margin, are able to move rapidly over the body of the
fish in the same way.
In his relation of the manner in which the octopus captures its prey,
the novelist is therefore substantially in accord with nature. The
points on which he chiefly errs, are—
1st. The structure, use, capability, and effect on its victim, of its
arms and suckers.
2nd. Its general organisation.
3rd. Its mode of progression when swimming.
4th. The manner in which it devours and digests its food.
The arms are described as “encircling Gilliatt’s whole body,
cutting into his ribs like cord; ... forming a ligature about his
stomach; ... enfolding and constricting his diaphragm like straps;
producing such compression that he could hardly breathe; ... his
body almost disappearing under the folds of this horrible bandage;
its knots garotting him, its contact paralysing him.” The suckers
are represented as being “like so many lips trying to drink your
blood; ... they bury themselves to the depth of an inch in the flesh
of their prisoner; ... on contact with them your muscles swell, the
fibres are wrenched, and your blood gushes forth, and mixes horribly
with the lymph of the mollusc.”
The whole of this is fallacious. The arms of the octopus are not used
as weapons of constriction, compression, or suffocation. They are
eight radiating, supple, tapering thongs, in ordinary specimens from
eighteen inches to two feet long, on each of which are mounted, in a
double row, numerous sucking discs, which decrease in size towards
the tips of the limbs, and act as so many dry cupping-glasses. There
are normally about 240 of these suckers on each arm, making a total
of about 1,920. I have counted more in some individuals. M. Hugo
gives their number as “fifty on each arm, 400 in all;” so on this
point he very much understates his case.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Sucker of the Octopus. (_O. vulgaris_).]
The cups themselves, by their internal mechanism for air exhaustion,
and consequent pressure of the outer atmosphere, adhere firmly to any
substance to which they are applied, whether stone, fish, crustacean,
or flesh of man; but in the octopus they have no power to puncture
or lacerate the skin, or to cause blood to flow. They are merely
pneumatically prehensile organs, by which the animal’s prey is caught
and held; not by “harpooning,” as the novelist supposes, but by their
atmospheric adhesion to the surface of its body. In this genus the
sucking discs are composed of a muscular membrane, the circumference
of which is thick and fleshy, and in some species cartilaginous, but
in all unarmed, and only adapted to secure close, air-tight contact
with any object it may touch. When experimenting on the holding force
of an octopus I have allowed it to fix its suckers firmly on my arm
and the back of my hand, and by pretending to try to pull them away
from its grasp have caused it to exert its utmost power of resistance
and retention. The only effect of this has been that the vacuum
produced an almost indistinguishable circular mark, corresponding
with the edge of the larger discs, and not nearly so distinct as
would be caused by the application of a glass tube to the skin, and
the partial exhaustion of the air in it by drawing it from the other
end by the mouth and tongue. In some of the Cephalopods the outer
circle of the cups is a horny ring, sharply serrated or dentated
around its edge; and in others—for instance, _Onychoteuthis_—the
centre of each cup is provided with a sharp, strong hook, capable of
being extended or sheathed, like the claws of a cat, which is plunged
deeply into the flesh of slippery prey for the better security of its
hold; but the cuttle-fishes thus furnished are, unlike the octopus,
habitually swimmers, instead of rock-crawlers. The sessile arms of
the octopods are considerably longer than those of the decapods, or
ten-armed cuttle-fishes; but the latter have, in addition to the
eight corresponding limbs, two long tentacular arms, which, in some
genera, are marvellous in the perfection of their compound apparatus
for securing and holding a struggling captive. This arrangement
is well suited to their habits and mode of life. Animals purely
swimmers, and which hunt and overtake their prey by speed, would be
impeded by having to drag after them a bundle of lengthy appendages
trailing heavily astern. But a long reach of arm is an advantage,
instead of a hindrance, to the octopus; for, although it can swim
on occasion, its ordinary habit is, either to rest suspended to the
side of a rock, to which it clings with the suckers of several of
its arms, in the position shewn in the frontispiece, or to remain
lurking in some favourite cranny; its body thrust for protection
and concealment well back in the interior of the recess; its bright
eyes keenly on the watch; three or four of its limbs firmly attached
to the walls of its hiding-place—the others gently waving, gliding,
and feeling about in the water, as if to maintain its vigilance,
and keep itself always on the alert, and in readiness to pounce on
any unfortunate wayfarer that may pass near its den. To small fish,
crustacean or mollusc, the slightest contact with even one of those
lithe arms is fatal. Instantaneously as pull of trigger brings down
a bird, or touch of electric wire explodes a torpedo or a mining
fuse, the pistons of the series of suckers are simultaneously drawn
inward, the air is removed from the pneumatic holders, and a vacuum
created in each; the victim strives to escape; a further retraction
of the central part of the disc makes all secure; and, as arm after
arm, containing a perfect mitrailleuse of inverted air-guns, takes
horrid hold, battery after battery of them is brought to bear, and
the pressure of the air is so great that nothing can effect the
relaxation of their retentive power but the destruction of the air
pump that works them, or the closing of the throttle-valve by which
they are connected with it.[12]
Desiring to have a better view than I had previously been able to
obtain of that which follows the seizure of a crab by an octopus,
I fastened one to a string, by which an attendant was to lower it
in the water close to the glass, whilst I stood watching in front.
The crab had hardly descended to the depth of two feet before an
octopus for which it was not intended, and which I had not observed
(so exactly had he assumed the hue of the surface to which he
clung), shot out like a rocket from one side of the tank, opened
his membranous umbrella, shut up the suspended crab within it, and
darted back again to the ledge of rock on which he had been lying in
ambush. There he held on, with the crab firmly pressed between his
body and the stone work. As this was not what I wished, I directed
my assistant to gently try to pull the bait away from him. As soon
as he felt the strain, he took a firm grasp of the rock with all
the suckers of seven of his arms, and, stretching the eighth aloft,
coiled it round the tautened line, the suckers actually closing on
the line also, as a caterpillar’s foot gripes a thin twig, or a
cobbler’s leather pad folds round his thread when he is making a
wax-end. It then became a game of “pull devil, pull baker,” and the
“devil-fish” won it. Noticing several jerks on the string, I thought
at first they were given by the man overhead, and told him not to
use too much force; but he called out, “It’s not me, sir, it’s the
octopus: I can’t move him; and he’s pulling so hard that, if I don’t
let go, he’ll break the line.” “Hold on, then, and let him break it,”
I replied. Tug! tug! dragged the tough, strong arm of the octopus;
and at the third tug the line broke, and the crab was all his own.
The twine was that used for mending the seine net, and was therefore
not particularly weak.
Although this experiment furnished a fresh illustration of the
holding power of an octopus, it had not taught me exactly that which
I wanted to know. I wished to be underneath that umbrella with the
crab, or (which was decidedly preferable) to be able to see what
happened beneath it without getting wet. My plan, therefore, was to
procure the seizure of the crab against the front glass, instead of
against the rock-work. Our next endeavour was successful. A second
crab was so fastened that the string could be withdrawn if desired,
and was lowered near to a great male octopus, who generally dwelt in
a nook in the west front corner of the tank. He was sleepy, and not
very hungry, and required a great deal of tempting to rouse him to
activity; but the sight of his favourite food overcame his laziness,
and, after some demonstrative panting, puffing, and erection of his
tubercles, he lunged out an arm to seize the precious morsel. It was
withdrawn from his reach; and so, at last, he turned out of bed,
rushed at it, and got it under him against the plate-glass, just
as I desired. In a second the crab was completely pinioned. Not a
movement, not a struggle was visible or possible: each leg, each
claw, was grasped all over by suckers—enfolded in them—stretched out
to its full extent by them. The back of the carapace was covered
all over with the tenacious vacuum-discs, brought together by the
adaptable contraction of the limb, and ranged in close order,
shoulder to shoulder, touching each other; whilst, between those
which dragged the abdominal plates towards the mouth, the black tip
of the hard, horny beak was seen for a single instant protruding from
the circular orifice in the centre of the radiation of the arms, and,
the next, had crunched through the shell, and was buried deep in the
flesh of the victim.
The action of an octopus when seizing its prey for its necessary food
is very like that of a cat pouncing on a mouse, and holding it down
beneath its paws. The movement is as sudden, the scuffle as brief,
and the escape of the prisoner even less probable. The fate of the
crab is not, really, more terrible than that of the mouse, or of a
minnow swallowed by a perch; but there is a repulsiveness about the
form, colour, and attitudes of its captor which invests it with a
kind of tragic horror.
In the next chapter the author writes:—
“To believe in the existence of the _pieuvre_ one must have seen
it. Compared to it the ancient hydras were insignificant. Orpheus,
Homer, and Hesiod imagined only the chimæra:—Providence created
the devil-fish. If terror was the object of its creation, it is
perfection.
“The ‘pieuvre’ has _no muscular organisation_, no menacing cry,
no breast-plate, no horn, no dart, no tail with which to hold or
bruise, no cutting fins, or wings with claws, no prickles, no
sword, no electric discharge, no venom, no talons, _no beak_, no
teeth.... It has no bones, _no blood_, _no flesh_. It is soft and
flabby. _It is an empty flask; a skin with nothing inside it. Its
eight tentacles may be turned inside out, like the fingers of a
glove. It has a single orifice, which is both vent and mouth. The
same opening performs both functions._”
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Mandibles of Octopus. (_O. vulgaris_).]
So says the novelist. The naturalist knows that it has a complete
and perfect muscular organisation; muscles which serve to retract
and depress the funnel, bundles of strong muscles passing along
the arms and branching to each of the suckers, within which other
_fasciculi_ of muscular fibres converge from the circumference to
the centre, and by their contraction produce the vacuum which gives
to the animal its power of adhesion,—muscles all over its body, and
a mass of muscles of such strength to work the powerful beak, that
if anyone, believing the fictionist, were to place his finger in the
small circular orifice in the centre of the base of the arms, he
would possibly learn practically that it is not “an empty flask with
nothing in it.” A sharp nip might perhaps teach him that it has not
only muscles, but a mouth and head also. For just within the oral
cavity lie, retracted and hidden, but ready for use when wanted, a
pair of horny mandibles which bite vertically, like the beak of a
parrot or turtle, except that the lower mandible is the longest and
overlaps the upper, and are so hard that they can not only tear the
softer animals the octopus is able to catch, but also break up the
shells of lobsters, crabs, and mussels, which are its usual food.
The head contains a brain, from which arises the system of nerves;
and the animal has a sense of smell, and organs of hearing and
taste, besides those which are apparent on its exterior, namely,
of sight and touch. Instead of having “no blood,” it is furnished
with a complete circulatory apparatus consisting of one systemic and
two branchial hearts, arteries which distribute the blood through
all parts of the body, and a system of veins or canals by which it
returns towards the gills, of which breathing organs the animal has
two—one on each side. By the alternate expansion and contraction
of the bladder-like mantle-sac—an action resembling that of a pair
of bellows—the water is pumped into contact with these gills,
which convey to the blood the oxygen contained in it; and when its
life-giving, purifying gas has been extracted from it, it is expelled
by the muscular, valved funnel, or syphon tube, which has also
another function, to be presently described. Far from being “a skin
with nothing inside it,” from the beak and mouth (within which is a
tongue like a rasp, having recurved spines or teeth) is continued the
alimentary canal, œsophagus, crop, gizzard, stomach, and intestines;
and within this so-called “empty pouch” are also the liver, and the
organs of reproduction and respiration. The “tentacles,” or arms,
cannot be “turned inside out like the fingers of a glove.” On making
a section across one of them, it will be seen that it is composed
of close muscles, the fibres of some of which run longitudinally,
and others transversely. The arm, therefore, is more like the strong
flexible lash of a stout hunting whip than the finger of a glove, and
is solid, except that it has a perforation along the centre of its
axis for the lodgment of its nerve and artery.
[Illustration: Fig. 4. Tongue of the Octopus (_O. vulgaris_).
Magnified 12 diameters.]
The author accurately describes the action and movement of the
octopus, and its utilisation of its eight arms when crawling at
the bottom, or on ledges of rocks. The globose body is then turned
upward, the mouth downward, and the arms sprawl along, and by
grappling some fresh object drag the body after them. But he is
mistaken concerning its mode of progression when swimming. After
stating that in swimming, it, so to speak, sheaths and draws close
together its arms, which is quite true, he continues:—
“Figure to yourself a sleeve sewn up with a fist in it. This fist,
_which is the head_, pushes through the water, and advances with an
undulating movement.”
That which M. Hugo supposes to be the head is the body of the
animal. He appears to have received this impression from Pliny,[13]
who writes:—“The head, which is directed obliquely when they swim,
is, in the living animal, hard and distended like a balloon.” The
cuttle-fishes, and the octopus amongst them, propel themselves
rapidly _backward_, when swimming, by the forcible expulsion from
the funnel, in sudden and frequent jets, of the water drawn in at
the branchial, or gill openings. Thus the organs of respiration
become those of locomotion as well, and the funnel has also another
function, being the orifice from which the excreta are expelled.
It has been asserted by various writers—and the statement has been
repeated by many able naturalists—that the octopus swims by vigorous
flappings of the expanded membrane which extends from the sheath of
the mouth along the arms, and connects the bases of the latter like
the web of a duck’s foot. It is true that this sometimes, though very
rarely, takes place, but its proper and usual mode of progression
is with the body in advance, the arms closely packed together, and
directed backward horizontally in its wake, whilst the jets of water,
pumped out at frequent intervals from the funnel, propel it at a
considerable speed. I have had opportunities of watching the habits
of at least a hundred individuals of this species, yet have only
three or four times seen them progress, when swimming, by powerful
contraction of the web-like membrane, and then but for a very short
distance. Still less frequently does the octopus reverse its usual
course; but I have twice seen one swim with its arms extended in
advance of it, by bending the syphon tube beneath its body so as to
present the orifice in a direction exactly contrary to its normal
position.
[Illustration: Fig. 5. The Octopus swimming.]
M. Hugo forcibly refers to the remarkable property of rapidly
changing its colour possessed by this animal. He writes:—
“Its under surface is yellowish; its upper, earthy. Its dusty
hue can neither be imitated nor explained: it might be called a
‘a beast made of ashes, which inhabits the water.’ Irritated, it
becomes violet. It is a spider in form, a chameleon in coloration.”
When quiescent, the general tone of colour of the octopus is a
mottled brown, but it assimilates itself as much as possible to
the rock to which for the time it may be holding. The moment it
commences to swim it assumes a deeper hue, which usually becomes
a dark, dingy red, but sometimes tends to purple. Mr. Darwin, in
his delightful “Journal of Researches made during the Voyage of
H.M.S. Beagle,” mentions his having noticed its endeavour to escape
detection by the use of this chameleon-like power of changing colour
so quickly as to cause it to vary with the nature of the ground
over which it passes. This is effected in the same manner as the
similar mutation of colour in the chameleon. Through the thin and
transparent outer skin are visible cells in the inner layer beneath
it, which contain pigment-matter of yellow, blue, red, and brown.
By the contraction and expansion of the cells, prominence is given
to one or another of these colours, at the will of the owner; and
not only do the spots appear, and fade, and alternate in position,
but, like human beings, the octopus turns pale when exhausted, and
flushes red under the influence of anger or excitement. A curious
play of colour, which I have elsewhere compared with the flashing
and dying out of sparks in tinder, often takes place on the skin of
the cephalopods by the continued action of the pigment cells, long
after the death of the animal. The ancients were well acquainted with
this colour-changing habit of the octopus. Aristotle mentions it, and
Oppian describes it as follows:—
“All fishers know the changing prekes’ deceit,
How, clung to rocks, when coming dangers threat
New forms they take, and wear a borrowed dress,
Mock the true stone, and colours well express.
As the rock looks they take a different stain,
Dapple with grey, or branch the livid vein.
Thus they, concealed, the dreaded danger shun
By borrowed shapes obscured, and lost in seeming stone.”
It was also frequently referred to by other writers. Athenæus quotes
Theognis of Megara as saying in his Elegies:—
“Remark the tricks of that most wary polypus,
Who always seems of the same colour and hue
As is the rock on which he lies;”
and Ion the tragedian, who wrote in his “Phœnix”:—
“I hate the colour-changing polypus
Clinging with bloodless feelers to the rocks.”
It was also the subject of a maxim equivalent to our “When you’re at
Rome, do as Rome does.” A proverb cited by Clearchus runs thus:—
“My son, my excellent Amphilocus,
Copy the shrewd device o’ the polypus
And make yourself as like as possible
To those whose land you chance to visit.”
M. Hugo poetically alludes to the phosphorescent glow said to be
emitted by the octopus in the dark:—
“By night, and especially in the rutting season, it is
phosphorescent. Awaiting its spouse, it beautifies, kindles,
illuminates itself; and, from the height of some rock, it may be
perceived in the profound darkness beneath, blossoming in wan
irradiation—a spectre sun.”
I have never been fortunate enough to witness the exhibition of this
phosphorescence by the living octopus, although in dead specimens,
as is the case with other marine animals, it becomes apparent as
soon as decomposition has commenced; but D’Orbigny mentions it, and
Mr. Darwin says, “I observed that one which I kept in the cabin
was slightly phosphorescent in the dark.”[14] No doubt concerning
this can, therefore, exist; for a more competent observer, or more
accurate recorder of facts than Mr. Darwin, never put pen to paper.
In his description of the manner in which the devil-fish absorbs its
victim, the author of “The Toilers of the Sea” releases his ardent
imagination from the few restraining ties by which it was bound to
reality. He writes:—
“You enter into the beast, the hydra incorporates itself with the
man: the man is amalgamated with the hydra. You become one. The
tiger can only devour you; the devil-fish inhales you. He draws
you to him, into him; and, bound and helpless, you feel yourself
slowly emptied into this frightful sac, which is a monster. To
be eaten alive is more than terrible; but to be drunk alive is
inexpressible.”
M. Hugo fortunately gives us the means of estimating the size of
the body of the octopus which attacked Gilliatt. He tells us that
its arms were “nearly a metre (thirty-nine inches) long.” None of
quite so great dimensions have, I believe, been found in the English
Channel, but it is not impossible that such exist. Granting this,
the body of such an octopus would not be very much larger than a
soda-water bottle or a Florence-flask, such as olive-oil is sold in:
and so the “horrible bag, which is a monster,” and into which you are
to be inhaled and drawn alive, is but a small affair after all. The
plain truth is, that the octopus and other cephalopods obtain and eat
their food very much like the rapacious birds. They are the falcons
of the sea. Some of them, like Onychoteuthis, strike their prey with
talons and suckers also; others, like the octopus, lay hold of it
with suckers alone; but they all tear the flesh with their beaks, and
swallow and digest their food in as unromantic a fashion as does hawk
or vulture.
But it is when the author indulges in what he is pleased to call
“philosophical meditation” on such animals that he arrives at the
highest point of hyperbolical mystery. He tells us:—
“They are the chosen forms of evil. What are we to do in presence
of these blasphemies of creation against itself?... The possible
is a formidable matrix. Mystery concretes itself in monsters.
Portions of shades come forth from this block, the perpetual; tear
themselves, divide themselves, roll, float, condense, borrow from
the ambient blackness, undergo unknown polarizations, assume life,
compose for themselves who can tell what forms with obscurity, what
souls with miasma; and issue from them larvæ, athwart the course of
vitality. They are as the darkness converted into beasts. Of what
use, for what purpose, are such creatures?—relapse of the eternal
question! These animals are phantoms as much as monsters. They are
the amphibiæ of death, the visible extremities of black circles.
They mark the transition of our reality to another.”
To analyse this is beyond my powers. One can only wonder what it
all means. The language is sententious, and would, no doubt, be
impressive if it were not incomprehensible. It reminds one of Mr.
Maccabe’s “Welsh sermon,” which, delivered with solemn earnestness,
rolls forth in grandly sonorous tones, but has not a word of Welsh
or sense in it; or of the “nonsense-problem” which Mark Twain says
was propounded to him by Artemus Ward, and which seemed so full of
thought and so clearly put that he blamed his “wooden head” because
he got into a hopeless tangle over it, until he found he had been
entrapped into pondering over “a string of plausibly worded sentences
that did not mean anything under the sun.”
Let us now take evidence concerning the dimensions to which the
octopus is known to attain, and the degree in which it may be
regarded as dangerous to man.
An octopus from our own coasts having arms two feet in length may
be considered a rather large specimen; and Dr. J. E. Gray, who was
always most kindly ready to place at the disposal of any sincere
inquirer the vast store of knowledge laid up in his wonderful memory,
told me that “there is not one in the British museum which exceeds
this size, or which would not go into a quart pot, body, arms and
all.” The largest British specimen I have hitherto seen had arms 2
ft. 6 in. long.
If, however, the octopus seldom or never arrives at a length of arm
of three feet on the northern coasts of France, we have sufficient
evidence that it exceeds it on her southern borders, and along the
Spanish and Italian shores of the Mediterranean.
M. Verany, of Nice, an able naturalist, mentions having seen an
octopus which weighed 33 lbs. and measured three metres from tip to
tip of its outstretched arms. This would make the length of each
arm about four-and-a-half feet. A fisherman who noticed it affixed
to the mole of the port of Nice had the hardihood to grasp it with
his hands, and made himself master of it, though not without much
difficulty.
Mr. Sylvanus Hanley, the well-known conchologist, and joint author
with Professor Edward Forbes of their standard work on the British
Mollusca, who passes every winter in Italy, has personally informed
me that there are living in the harbour of Leghorn several octopods
having arms at least four feet long, and as thick at their base as
a man’s wrist. They lie with their bodies squeezed into, and hidden
in, crevices in the stone-work of the mole and sea-wall, two or three
of their arms extended and waving about in the water in readiness
to seize passing prey, and the others holding fast to the blocks of
stone. Mr. Hanley says that his son, who is a practised shore-hunter,
and no coward, having frequent occasion, whilst in search of shells,
to climb along a ledge of the rough masonry near the surface of the
water, just beneath which was the lurking-place of one of these great
creatures, was for some time afraid to pass the spot, in consequence
of the animal’s formidable appearance; for, as he approached, it
would thrust one or two of its disc-studded arms out of water, and
stretch them towards him in a threatening manner, in its endeavours
to reach him. The Italian divers and bathers are said to fear these
creatures.
My deceased friend John Keast Lord gives in his book, “The Naturalist
in British Columbia,” some particulars of the dimensions attained
by the octopus in North-Western America. He writes:—“The octopus,
as seen on our own coasts (of England), although even here called a
‘man-sucker’ by the fishermen, is a mere Tom Thumb—a tiny dwarf—as
compared with the Brobdingnagian proportions he attains in the sunny
bays and long inland canals of Vancouver’s 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 ferocity on all and everything it can
catch. 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.” He adds that the Indians, when spearing them for
food, take care to keep them at a distance till they have stabbed
them to death; knowing that if an octopus were once to get some of
its huge arms over the side of the canoe, it could as easily haul it
over as a child could upset a basket. But we know that a canoe is
very crank, and easily upset.
I have often been asked whether an octopus of the ordinary size
can really be dangerous to bathers. Decidedly “Yes,” in certain
situations. The octopus would not seize a man for the purpose of
devouring him; nor do I believe that the act would be prompted by a
deliberate intention to drown him, that his dead body might become
an attractive bait for crabs, which are the animal’s favourite food;
but rather by an instinctive desire to lay hold on anything moving
within reach. The holding power of its numerous suckers is enormous.
It is almost impossible forcibly to detach it from its adhesion to a
rock or the flat bottom of a tank; and if a large one happened to fix
one or more of its strong, tough arms on the leg of a swimmer whilst
the others held firmly to a rock, I doubt if the man could disengage
himself under water by mere strength, before being exhausted.
Fortunately, it can be made to relax its hold by grasping it tightly
round the “throat” (if I may so call it), and it may be well that
this should be known.
That men are occasionally drowned by these creatures is,
unfortunately, a fact too well attested. In August, 1867, the _Genoa
Gazette_ mentioned that a carter of Sampierdarena, who had gone to
bathe near the reef of San Andria, was seized by an octopus, which,
in spite of all his efforts, dragged him under water and drowned him.
Not one of the bathers who witnessed the occurrence dared to go to
the assistance of the unfortunate man.
Admiral Baillie Hamilton has kindly furnished me with some
information on the subject. He tells me that in his time, many years
ago, it was an understood thing that there existed amongst the rocks
of Gibraltar Bay an octopus of large size; and that during the last
half-century one soldier at least of the garrison has been drowned
whilst bathing there by being grasped under water by one of these
“devil-fishes.”
Major Newsome, R.E., has also been so kind as to send me the
following description of an incident which happened to himself.
“In the years 1856-7,” he writes, “I was stationed at East London,
a landing place about 900 miles from the Cape, up the east coast
of Africa;—I speak from memory, having no map at hand. It is a
rock-bound coast with the exception of the river’s mouth, which
consists of a small space of sand. The landing is most dangerous,
and, conducted in surf boats, hatched over, is only then practicable
in very calm weather. The ordinary practice amongst the officers,
both for comfort and saving of labour, is to bathe on the sea shore.
Such was my custom each morning. There was one quadrangular cavity
in the rocks which, at low water and in calm weather, formed a very
desirable bath; but in rough weather, or at any time of tide except
near about low water, it was unapproachable. At the best of times it
was generally in a boil, and I have known a strong swimmer washed
clean out of it on to the adjoining rocks, cut most grievously about
the body by barnacles. Nevertheless, we mostly took a dip there when
practicable, on account of the freshness of the water. At other
times the plunge took place in smooth pools left in the rocks by
the receding tide, which, though not quite so fresh, yet formed a
very acceptable bath. One morning I took a header into one of these
pools, which was, perhaps, 20 feet long, 7 to 8 feet wide, and deep
in the centre—8 or 9 feet. As I swam from one end to the other, I
was horrified at feeling something around my ancle, and made for the
side as speedily as I could. I thought at first it was only seaweed;
but as I landed, and trod with my foot on the rock, my disgust was
heightened at feeling a fleshy and slippery substance under me. I
was, I confess, alarmed, and so, apparently, was the beast on whom
I trod, and whom, I suspect, I thereby discomfited, as he quickly
detached himself and made again for the water. Some fellow-bathers,
whom I hailed, came to my assistance, and with a boat-hook, on to
which the brute clung, he was, eventually, safely landed. When
extended he would have filled a hoop of five feet diameter. The grasp
of an ordinary sized octopus holding to a rock would, I suppose, in
lat. 30°, be not less than 30 lb. to 40 lb. The floating power of a
man is between 5 lb. and 6 lb., and it takes a very strong swimmer to
convey an ordinary fowling-piece, which weighs only 7 lb., across a
river, dry. Had I not kept mid-channel, I believe it would have been
a life-and-death struggle between myself and the beast on my ancle.
In the open water I was the best man; but near the bottom or sides,
which I could not have reached with my arms, but which he could have
reached with his, he would, certainly, have drowned me.”
Major Newsome has not over-estimated the holding power of an octopus.
One in the Brighton Aquarium was seen dragging towards it a huge
stone, from 40 lb. to 50 lb. in weight. It is not uncommon for one to
haul up to a ledge of rock, four or five feet from the bottom, two
or three heavy oysters simultaneously; and it unfortunately happened
in the early days of the Institution, and before precautions were
taken to avert such accidents, that an octopus drew up, by night, the
waste-valve of his tank, and let all the water run out of it; thus,
by his strength, like Samson at Gaza, bringing death upon himself and
all his companions.