360 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



a respectable and veracious man, who, after having made 

 several voyages to China as a master trader, retired from a 

 seafaring life and lived at Dunkirk. He told De Montfort 

 that in one of his voyages, whilst crossing from St. Helena 

 to Cape Negro, he was becalmed, and took advantage of 

 the enforced idleness of the crew to have the vessel scraped 

 and painted. Whilst three of his men were standing on 

 planks slung over the side, an enormous cuttle rose from 

 the water, and threw one of its arms around two of the 

 sailors, whom it tore away, with the scaffolding on which 

 they stood. With another arm it seized the third man, who 

 held on tightly to the rigging, and shouted for help. His 

 shipmates ran to his assistance, and succeeded in rescuing 

 him by cutting away the creature's arm with axes and 

 knives, but he died delirious on the following night. The 

 captain tried to save the other two sailors by killing the 

 animal, and drove several harpoons into it ; but they broke 

 away, and the men were carried down by the monster. 



The arm cut off was said to have been twenty-five feet 

 long, and as thick as the mizen-yard, and to have had on it 

 suckers as big as saucepan-lids. I believe the old sea- 

 captain's narrative of the incident to be true ; the dimensions 

 given by De Montfort are wilfully and deliberately false. 

 The belief in the power of the cuttle to sink a ship and 

 devour her crew is as widely spread over the surface of the 

 globe, as it is ancient in point of time. I have been told 

 by a friend that he saw in a shop in China a picture of a 

 cuttle embracing a junk, apparently of about 300 tons 

 burthen, and helping itself to the sailors, as one picks 

 gooseberries off a bush. 



Traditions of a monstrous cuttle attacking and destroying 

 ships arc current also at the present day in the Polynesian 

 Islands. Mr. Gill, the missionary previously quoted, tells 



