Part 62 (1/2)
The eyes were fixed on Gilliatt.
He recognised the Devil-Fish.
II
THE MONSTER
It is difficult for those who have not seen it to believe in the existence of the devil-fish.
Compared to this creature, the ancient hydras are insignificant.
At times we are tempted to imagine that the vague forms which float in our dreams may encounter in the realm of the Possible attractive forces, having power to fix their lineaments, and shape living beings, out of these creatures of our slumbers. The Unknown has power over these strange visions, and out of them composes monsters. Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod imagined only the Chimera: Providence has created this terrible creature of the sea.
Creation abounds in monstrous forms of life. The wherefore of this perplexes and affrights the religious thinker.
If terror were the object of its creation, nothing could be imagined more perfect than the devil-fish.
The whale has enormous bulk, the devil-fish is comparatively small; the jararaca makes a hissing noise, the devil-fish is mute; the rhinoceros has a horn, the devil-fish has none; the scorpion has a dart, the devil-fish has no dart; the shark has sharp fins, the devil-fish has no fins; the vespertilio-bat has wings with claws, the devil-fish has no wings; the porcupine has his spines, the devil-fish has no spines; the sword-fish has his sword, the devil-fish has none; the torpedo has its electric spark, the devil-fish has none; the toad has its poison, the devil-fish has none; the viper has its venom, the devil-fish has no venom; the lion has its talons, the devil-fish has no talons; the griffon has its beak, the devil-fish has no beak; the crocodile has its jaws, the devil-fish has no teeth.
The devil-fish has no muscular organisation, no menacing cry, no breastplate, no horn, no dart, no claw, no tail with which to hold or bruise; no cutting fins, or wings with nails, no p.r.i.c.kles, no sword, no electric discharge, no poison, no talons, no beak, no teeth. Yet he is of all creatures the most formidably armed.
What, then, is the devil-fish? It is the sea vampire.
The swimmer who, attracted by the beauty of the spot, ventures among breakers in the open sea, where the still waters hide the splendours of the deep, or in the hollows of unfrequented rocks, in unknown caverns abounding in sea plants, testacea, and crustacea, under the deep portals of the ocean, runs the risk of meeting it. If that fate should be yours, be not curious, but fly. The intruder enters there dazzled; but quits the spot in terror.
This frightful apparition, which is always possible among the rocks in the open sea, is a greyish form which undulates in the water. It is of the thickness of a man's arm, and in length nearly five feet. Its outline is ragged. Its form resembles an umbrella closed, and without handle. This irregular ma.s.s advances slowly towards you. Suddenly it opens, and eight radii issue abruptly from around a face with two eyes.
These radii are alive: their undulation is like lambent flames; they resemble, when opened, the spokes of a wheel, of four or five feet in diameter. A terrible expansion! It springs upon its prey.
The devil-fish harpoons its victim.
It winds around the sufferer, covering and entangling him in its long folds. Underneath it is yellow; above, a dull, earthy hue: nothing could render that inexplicable shade dust coloured. Its form is spider-like, but its tints are like those of the chamelion. When irritated it becomes violet. Its most horrible characteristic is its softness.
Its folds strangle, its contact paralyses.
It has an aspect like gangrened or scabrous flesh. It is a monstrous embodiment of disease.
It adheres closely to its prey, and cannot be torn away; a fact which is due to its power of exhausting air. The eight antennae, large at their roots, diminish gradually, and end in needle-like points. Underneath each of these feelers range two rows of pustules, decreasing in size, the largest ones near the head, the smaller at the extremities. Each row contains twenty-five of these. There are, therefore, fifty pustules to each feeler, and the creature possesses in the whole four hundred. These pustules are capable of acting like cupping-gla.s.ses. They are cartilaginous substances, cylindrical, h.o.r.n.y, and livid. Upon the large species they diminish gradually from the diameter of a five-franc piece to the size of a split pea. These small tubes can be thrust out and withdrawn by the animal at will. They are capable of piercing to a depth of more than an inch.
This sucking apparatus has all the regularity and delicacy of a key-board. It stands forth at one moment and disappears the next. The most perfect sensitiveness cannot equal the contractibility of these suckers; always proportioned to the internal movement of the animal, and its exterior circ.u.mstances. The monster is endowed with the qualities of the sensitive plant.
This animal is the same as those which mariners call Poulps; which science designates Cephalopterae, and which ancient legends call Krakens.
It is the English sailors who call them ”Devil-fish,” and sometimes Bloodsuckers. In the Channel Islands they are called _pieuvres_.
They are rare at Guernsey, very small at Jersey; but near the island of Sark are numerous as well as very large.
An engraving in Sonnini's edition of Buffon represents a Cephaloptera crus.h.i.+ng a frigate. Denis Montfort, in fact, considers the Poulp, or Octopod, of high lat.i.tudes, strong enough to destroy a s.h.i.+p. Bory Saint Vincent doubts this; but he shows that in our regions they will attack men. Near Brecq-Hou, in Sark, they show a cave where a devil-fish a few years since seized and drowned a lobster-fisher. Peron and Lamarck are in error in their belief that the ”poulp” having no fins cannot swim. He who writes these lines has seen with his own eyes, at Sark, in the cavern called the Boutiques, a pieuvre swimming and pursuing a bather.
When captured and killed, this specimen was found to be four English feet broad, and it was possible to count its four hundred suckers. The monster thrust them out convulsively in the agony of death.