FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 205 



great flat plates on the arms, and it was formerly 

 thought that when, in calm weather, the owner 

 rose to the surface, it sat back comfortably in its 

 shell, raised the two broad arms aloft and used 

 them as sails. Such a performance should properly 

 take place only within sight of the fleets of en- 

 tangled ships in the Sargasso Sea! 



I never tired of watching the squids and octo- 

 puses which we captured. Soon after we landed 

 the nautilus, Serge, with his usual skill, caught a 

 two-foot squid which I studied for many minutes. 

 It squirted sepia all over us and bit our hands 

 before we could drop it in an aquarium. When 

 it quieted down it pulsated slowly, while the colors 

 came and went over the body in such a way that 

 new adjectives will have to be coined adequately 

 to describe it, — reds, blacks, browns, yellows, roll- 

 ing, surging, springing into vision as the pigment 

 spots contracted or expanded, a living, liquid 

 palette. 



The staring eyes were oval, and of an astonish- 

 ing turquoise blue, and even on this surface, scarlet 

 spots grew and passed — vanishing completely, 

 only to reappear and coalesce so that the tur- 

 quoise became carnelian. I looked into the sinister, 

 narrow, cat-like pupils, and they seemed to express 

 all the horrible mystery of things which should 

 not be, — such as these monstrous, flabby creatures 

 calling the snail, the slug, the nautilus and the 

 oyster brothers — possessing not even the prestige 

 of having fallen, like the humble sea-squirts, from 

 higher aspirations — shellfish they are and nothing 



