THE FABULOUS KRAKEN. 279 
Cook’s first voyage, found the dead carcass of a gigantic cuttle- 
fish floating between Cape Horn and the Polynesian islands. It 
was surrounded by aquatic birds, which were feeding on its 
remains. From the parts of this specimen, which are still 
preserved in the Hunterian collection, and which have always 
strongly excited the attention of naturalists, it must have 
measured at least six feet from the end of the tail to the end of 
the tentacles. 
Near Yan Diemen’s Land, Péron saw a sepia about as 
big as a tun rolling about in the waters. Its enormous arms 
had the appearance of frightful snakes. Each of these organs 
was at least seven feet long, and measured seven or eight inches 
round the base. These well authenticated proportions are truly 
formidable, and fully justify the dread and abhorrence which 
the Polynesian divers entertain of those snake-armed monsters 
of the deep; but not satisfied with reality, some writers have 
magnified the size of the cephalopods to fabulous dimensions. 
Thus Pernetti mentions a colossal cuttle-fish, which, climbing 
up the rigging, overturned a three-masted ship; and Pliny 
notices a similar giant, with arms thirty feet long and a corre- 
sponding girth. But all this is nothing to the Norwegian kraken, 
a mass of a quarter of a mile in diameter, and a back covered 
with a thicket of sea-weeds. When it comes to the surface, 
which seems to be but rarely the case, it raises its arms mast- 
high into the air, and, having enjoyed for a time the lovely 
daylight, sinks slowly back again into abysmal darkness. 
Fishermen are said to have landed on a kraken, and to have 
kindled a fire upon the supposed island for the purpose of 
cooking their dinner. But even a kraken, thick-skinned as 
he may be, does not like his back to be converted into a 
hearth, and thus it happened that the treacherous ground 
give way under the mistaken mariners, and overwhelmed 
them in the waters. Strange that the oriental tale of Sinbad 
the sailor should thus be re-echoed in the wild legends of the 
north. 
All the dibranchiate cephalopods are destitute of an outward 
shell, with the sole exception of the Spirula, a small species 
chiefly found in the South Sea, and of the far more renowned 
Argonaut, which poets, ancient and modern, have celebrated as 
the model from which man took the first idea of navigation. 
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