IN DEFENSE OF OCTOPUSES 293 



speed. I recall once being out to sea in a fishing trawler off the 

 Virginia Capes. I was sitting in the dark on deck watching the 

 stars and swaying to the slight roll of the boat when suddenly 

 I heard a rapidly reiterated splashing in the sea. The sound was 

 slightly reminiscent of the pattering noise of flying fish. I knew 

 that I w^as too far north for any quantity of these volant crea- 

 tures. I went below and returned on deck with a flashlight. 

 Its beam pierced the dark and glowed on the wave tops. The 

 ship was passing through a school of small surface fish. They 

 were being prayed upon by hundreds of Loligo squid. The 

 squid were shuttling back and forth through the water at in- 

 credible speed. Most wonderful was the organization with 

 which they seemed to operate. Entire masses of these cephalo- 

 pods, all swimming in the same direction, would dart at the 

 mass fish, quickly seize and bite at them, then abruptly wheel 

 as a unit and sweep through the panic-stricken victims which 

 scurried everywhere. Some of these squid were traveling so 

 rapidly that when they approached the top of the water they 

 burst through and went skimming through the air for several 

 yards, faUing back with light splashes. In the morning I found 

 several on the deck of the trawler where they had jumped, a 

 vertical distance of at least six feet! There is another record 

 made near the coast of Brazil of a swarm of squids flying out 

 of the water on the deck of a ship which was twelve feet above 

 the surface and which was further protected by a high bulwark, 

 making a minimum jump of fifteen feet! Several score were 

 shoveled off the ship when daylight came. 



The cephalopods and particularly the squids might be com- 

 pared to living fountain pens or animated syringes, for they 

 accomplish their flight-like swimming by pulling liquid into 

 their body cavities and squirting it out again. Their likeness 

 to a living fountain pen is even further heightened when one 

 considers that some of the cephalopods contain ink and a quill. 



