A MARINE MONSTER. 



149 



fish is preserved, which is larger than a human hand. In 1853 a gigantic specimen was 

 stranded on the coast of Jutland, which furnished many barrow-loads of flesh and other 

 organic matter. 



Who has not heard of the kraken, the terror of the northern seas ? Naturalists and 

 others long ago gave credence to the assertions of certain Scandinavian writers who believed 

 themselves in the existence of a great sea-monster capable of arresting and annihilating 

 vessels. This kraken was made to embrace a three-masted vessel in its arms. " If/' says 

 laughing De Montfort, "my kraken takes with them, I shall make it extend its arms 

 to both shores of the Straits of Gibraltar." A Bishop of Bergen assured the world that a 

 whole regiment could easily manoeuvre on the back of the kraken. All this, however, 

 probably arose from the observation of 

 some extraordinarily large specimen. 

 An apparently well-athenticatecj. fact is 

 the following, vouched for by a French 

 naval officer, and the then French Con- 

 sul at the Canaries. 



The steam corvette Alec ton fell in, 

 between Teneriffe and Madeira, with 

 a sea-monster of the cuttle kind, said 

 to be fifty feet long, without counting 

 its eight arms ; it had two fleshy fins ; 

 they estimated its weight at close on 

 two tons. The commander allowed 

 shots to be fired at it, one of which 

 evidently hit the animal in a vital 

 part, for the waves were stained with 

 blood. A strong musky odour was 

 noticed. This is characteristic of many 

 of the cephalopods. 



" The musket shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons were employed, 

 but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped 

 from the harpoon, it dived under the ship, and came up again at the other side. They 

 succeeded at last in getting the harpoon to bite, and in passing a bowline hitch round the 

 posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to hoist it out of the water the rope 

 penetrated deeply into the flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head with the arms and 

 tentacles dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought 

 on board : they weighed about forty pounds." The crew wished to pursue it in a boat, but 

 the commander refused, fearing that they might be capsized. "It is probable," says 

 M. Moquin-Tandon,* "that this colossal mollusc was sick, or exhausted by a recent 

 struggle with some other monster of the deep." 



THE COMMON NAUTILI'S (Nautilus fO 



* In " The World of the Sea." M. Tandon is commenting on the account published by M. Sabin Barthelot, then. 

 French Consul at the Canary Islands. 



