Part 2 (1/2)

As we can find no species of the _Octopidae_ or _Sepiidae_ which can furnish a pretext for the stories told of the Kraken, we must try to ascertain how far a similitude to it may be traced in the third family we have discussed, the _Teuthidae_.

The belief in the existence of gigantic cuttles is an ancient one.

Aristotle mentions it, and Pliny tells of an enormous polypus which at Carteia, in Grenada--an old and important Roman colony near Gibraltar--used to come out of the sea at night, and carry off and devour salted tunnies from the curing depots on the sh.o.r.e; and adds that when it was at last killed, the head of it (they used to call the body the head, because in swimming it goes in advance) was found to weigh 700 lbs. aelian records a similar incident, and describes his monster as crus.h.i.+ng in its arms the barrels of salt fish to get at the contents.

These two must have been octopods if they were anything; the word ”polypus” thus especially designates it, and moreover, the free-swimming cuttles and squids would be helpless if stranded on the sh.o.r.e. Some of the old writers seem to have aimed rather at making their histories sensational than at carefully investigating the credibility or the contrary of the highly coloured reports brought to them. These were, of course, gross exaggerations, but there was generally a substratum of truth in them. They were based on the rare occurrence of specimens, smaller certainly, but still enormous, of some known species, and in most cases the worst that can be said of their authors is that they were culpably careless and foolishly credulous.

Unhappily so lenient a judgment cannot be pa.s.sed on some comparatively recent writers. Denys de Montfort, half a century later than Pontoppidan, not only professed to believe in the Kraken, but also in the existence of another gigantic animal distinct from it; a colossal _poulpe_, or octopus, compared with which Pliny's was a mere pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside of a showman's caravan at a fair than seriously to ill.u.s.trate a work on natural history,[10] he depicted this tremendous cuttle as throwing its arms over a three masted vessel, snapping off its masts, tearing down the yards, and on the point of dragging it to the bottom, if the crew had not succeeded in cutting off its immense limbs with cutla.s.ses and hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtaining information, for he was at one time an a.s.sistant in the geological department of the Museum of Natural History, in Paris; and wrote a work on conchology,[11] besides that already referred to. But it appears to have been his deliberate purpose to cajole the public; for it is reported that he exclaimed to M. Defrance: ”If my entangled s.h.i.+p is accepted, I will make my 'colossal poulpe'

overthrow a whole fleet.” Accordingly we find him gravely declaring[12]

that one of the great victories of the British navy was converted into a disaster by the monsters which are the subject of his history. He boldly a.s.serted that the six men-of-war captured from the French by Admiral Rodney in the West Indies on the 12th of April, 1782, together with four British s.h.i.+ps detached from his fleet to convoy the prizes, were all suddenly engulphed in the waves on the night of the battle under such circ.u.mstances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by colossal cuttles, and not by a gale or any ordinary casualty.

[10] 'Histoire Naturelle generale et particuliere des Mollusques,'

vol. ii., p. 256.

[11] 'Conchyliologie Systematique.'

[12] 'Hist. Nat. des Moll.,' vol. ii., pp. 358 to 368.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7.--FACSIMILE OF DE MONTFORT'S ”_Poulpe colossal_.”]

Unfortunately for De Montfort, the inexorable logic of facts not only annihilates his startling theory, but demonstrates the reckless falsity of his plausible statements. The captured vessels did not sink on the night of the action, but were all sent to Jamaica to refit, and arrived there safely. Five months afterwards, however, a convoy of nine line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps (amongst which were Rodney's prizes), one frigate, and about a hundred merchantmen, were dispersed, whilst on their voyage to England, by a violent storm, during which some of them unfortunately foundered. The various accidents which preceded the loss of these vessels was related in evidence to the Admiralty by the survivors, and official doc.u.ments prove that De Montfort's fleet-destroying _poulpe_ was an invention of his own, and had no part whatever in the disaster that he attributed to it.

I have been told, but cannot vouch for the truth of the report, that De Montfort's propensity to write that which was not true culminated in his committing forgery, and that he died in the galleys. But he records a statement of Captain Jean Magnus Dens, said to have been a respectable and veracious man, who, after having made several voyages to China as a master trader, retired from a seafaring life and lived at Dunkirk. He told De Montfort that in one of his voyages, whilst crossing from St.

Helena to Cape Negro, he was becalmed, and took advantage of the enforced idleness of the crew to have the vessel sc.r.a.ped and painted.

Whilst three of his men were standing on planks slung over the side, an enormous cuttle rose from the water, and threw one of its arms around two of the sailors, whom it tore away, with the scaffolding on which they stood. With another arm it seized the third man, who held on tightly to the rigging, and shouted for help. His s.h.i.+pmates ran to his a.s.sistance, and succeeded in rescuing him by cutting away the creature's arm with axes and knives, but he died delirious on the following night.

The captain tried to save the other two sailors by killing the animal, and drove several harpoons into it; but they broke away, and the men were carried down by the monster.

The arm cut off was said to have been twenty-five feet long, and as thick as the mizen-yard, and to have had on it suckers as big as saucepan-lids. I believe the old sea-captain's narrative of the incident to be true; the dimensions given by De Montfort are wilfully and deliberately false. The belief in the power of the cuttle to sink a s.h.i.+p and devour her crew is as widely spread over the surface of the globe, as it is ancient in point of time. I have been told by a friend that he saw in a shop in China a picture of a cuttle embracing a junk, apparently of about 300 tons burthen, and helping itself to the sailors, as one picks gooseberries off a bush.

Traditions of a monstrous cuttle attacking and destroying s.h.i.+ps are current also at the present day in the Polynesian Islands. Mr. Gill, the missionary previously quoted, tells us[13] that the natives of Aitutaki, in the Hervey group, have a legend of a famous explorer, named Rata, who built a double canoe, decked and rigged it, and then started off in quest of adventures. At the prow was stationed the dauntless Nganaoa, armed with a long spear and ready to slay all monsters. One day when speeding pleasantly over the ocean, the voice of the ever vigilant Nganaoa was heard: ”O Rata! yonder is a terrible enemy starting up from ocean depths.” It proved to be an octopus (query, squid?) of extraordinary dimensions. Its huge tentacles encircled the vessel in their embrace, threatening its instant destruction. At this critical moment Nganaoa seized his spear, and fearlessly drove it through the head of the creature. The tentacles slowly relaxed, and the dead monster floated off on the surface of the ocean.

[13] _Leisure Hour_, October, 1875, p. 636.

Pa.s.sing from the early records of the appearance of cuttles of unusual size, and the current as well as the traditional belief in their existence by the inhabitants of many countries, let us take the testimony of travellers and naturalists who have a right to be regarded as competent observers. In so doing we must bear in mind that until Professor Owen propounded the very clear and convenient cla.s.sification now universally adopted, the squids, as well as the eight-footed _Octopidae_, were all grouped under the t.i.tle of _Sepia_.

Pernetty, describing a voyage made by him in the years 1763-4,[14]

mentions gigantic cuttles met with in the Southern Seas.

[14] 'Voyage aux Iles Malouines.'

Shortly afterwards, during the first week in March 1769, Banks and Solander, the scientific fellow-voyagers with Lieutenant Cook (afterwards the celebrated Captain Cook), in H.M.S. _Endeavour_, found in the North Pacific, in lat.i.tude 38 44' S. and longitude 110 33' W., a large calamary which had just been killed by the birds, and was floating in a mangled condition on the water. Its arms were furnished, instead of suckers, with a double row of very sharp talons, which resembled those of a cat, and, like them, were retractable into a sheath of skin from which they might be thrust at pleasure. Of this cuttle they say, with evident pleasurable remembrance of a savoury meal, they made one of the best soups they ever tasted. Professor Owen tells us, in the paper already referred to, that when he was curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and preparing, in 1829, his first catalogue thereof, he was struck with the number of oceanic invertebrates which Hunter had obtained. He learned from Mr. Clift that Hunter had supplied Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks with stoppered bottles containing alcohol, in which to preserve the new marine animals that he might meet with during the circ.u.mnavigatory voyage about to be undertaken by Cook. Thinking it probable that Banks might have stowed some parts of this great hook-armed squid in one of these bottles for his anatomical friend, he searched for, and found in a bottle marked ”J. B.,” portions of its arms, the beak with tongue, a heart ventricle, &c., and, amongst the dry preparations, the terminal part of the body, with an attached pair of rhomboidal fins. The remainder had furnished Cook and his companions Banks and Solander with a welcome change of diet in the commander's cabin of the _Endeavour_. As the inner surface of the arms of the squid, as well as the terminals of its tentacles, were studded with hooks, Professor Owen named it _Enoploteuthis Cookii_. He estimates the diameter of the tail fin at 15 inches, the length of its body 3 feet, of its head 10 inches, of the shorter arms 16 inches, and of the longer tentacles about the same as its body--thus giving a total length of about 6 ft. 9 in. Although individuals of other species, of larger dimensions, are known to have existed, this is the largest specimen of the hook-armed calamaries that has been scientifically examined. It would have been a formidable antagonist to a man under circ.u.mstances favourable to the exertion of its strength, and the use of its prehensile and lacerating talons.

Peron,[15] the well-known French zoologist, mentions having seen at sea, in 1801, not far from Van Diemen's Land, at a very little distance from his s.h.i.+p, _Le Geographe_, a ”Sepia,” of the size of a barrel, rolling with noise on the waves; its arms, between 6 and 7 feet long, and 6 or 7 inches in diameter at the base, extended on the surface, and writhing about like great snakes. He recognised in this, and no doubt correctly, one of the calamaries. The arms that he saw were evidently the animal's shorter ones, as under such circ.u.mstances, with neither enemy to combat nor prey to seize at the moment, the longer tentacles would remain concealed.

[15] 'Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes.'

Quoy and Gaimard[16] report that in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Equator, they found the remains of an enormous calamary, half eaten by the sharks and birds, which could not have weighed less, when entire, than 200 lbs. A portion of this was secured, and is preserved in the Museum of Natural History, Paris.

[16] 'Voyage de l'Uranie: Zoologie,' vol. i., part 2, p. 411. 1824.

Captain Sander Rang[17] records having fallen in with, in mid-ocean, a species distinct from the others, of a dark red colour, having short arms, and a body the size of a hogshead.