CUTTLES AND SQUIDS. 8i 



related the follomng adventure of a shipmate who was present. I 

 must tell it in his own language. 



" We was out fishin' one quiet night," he said, " and had just 

 got our trawl awash, and was a-goin' to hand it in-board, when 

 Bill, here, all of a sudden lets go his holt, roars out like a stuck 



pig — *' Oh-h-h ! — What the is that ? " and tumbles back'ards 



into an empty fish-basket. We hadn't no time to 'tend to him 

 till we'd got our haul on deck, but I guessed what was up ; and 

 when we looked round we pretty near split our sides with laughing. 

 There was Bill a-leanin' back agin the skiff, wipin' his eyes, to get 

 some muck out of 'em, as he said made 'em smart, and his face 

 for all the world as if Davy Jones had emptied a tar-barrel on his 

 head, and he looking as doleful as a schoolboy as has upset the 

 inkstand over his hands and smeared his face with it in rubbin' 

 the tears away while he was a-crying for fear the master'd lick 

 him. Well, sir, it were one o' them scuttles as we're talkin' about 

 as we'd brought up, and they can shoot straight and no mistake. 

 It's my opinion as Mr. Scuttle sighted Bill's nose as soon as he 

 come atop of the water and aimed right at it ; for you can see, 

 sir, as Bill's nose looms as red as Beachy Head Light in a fog, and 

 any scuttle as misses it must be a foci. Bill won't forget that 

 dose of ink for a good while yet — will 'ee, old man ?" 



Bill is very good natured, and joined heartily in the laugh 

 elicited by the anecdote. The worthy fellow might have retorted 

 that he had seen his friend's face, and those of half the population 

 of his neighbourhood simultaneously blackened, if not by a cuttle- 

 fish, by an equally singular accident. 



In the autumn of 1872, an American full-rigged ship, bound to 

 London, went ashore in Seaford Bay, in consequence of the 

 captain mistaking the lights and (believing himself further up 

 Channel) pointing her head N.E. before he ought to have done 

 so. The vessel was lightly built — a mere bandbox of a craft — 

 and, after beating and thumping for a short time close in shore, 

 she became a total wreck. The masts went by the board, and, as 



