THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT 31 



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 GilHatt. 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 Enghsh 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 m^uch 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 fonns with obscurity, 

 what souls with miasma ; and issue from them larvse, 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 amphibice 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 



