WHICH TREATS OF THE ERA KEN. 145 



went below to a troubled sleep, wherein all the awful 

 monsters that an over-excited brain could conjure up 

 pursued me through the gloomy caves of ocean, or 

 mocked my pigmy efforts to escape. 



The occasions upon which these gigantic cuttle-fish 

 appear at the sea surface must, I think, be very rare. 

 From their construction, they appear fitted only to grope 

 among the rocks at the bottom of the ocean. Their mode 

 of progression is backward, by the forcible ejection of a 

 jet of water from an orifice in the neck, beside the rectum 

 or cloaca. Consequently their normal position is head- 

 downward, and with tentacles spread out like the ribs of 

 an umbrella — eight of them at least ; the two long ones, 

 like the antennae of an insect, rove unceasingly around, 

 seeking prey. 



The imagination can hardly picture a more terrible 

 object than one of these huge monsters brooding in the 

 ocean depths, the gloom of his surroundings increased 

 by the inky fluid (sepia) which he secretes in copious 

 quantities, every cup-shaped disc, of the hundreds with 

 which the restless tentacles are furnished, ready at the 

 slightest touch to grip whatever is near, not only by 

 suction, but by the great claws set all round within its 

 circle. And in the centre of this net-work of living traps 

 is the chasm-like mouth, with its enormous parrot-beak, 

 ready to rend piecemeal whatever is held by the tentaculae. 

 The very thought of it makes one's flesh crawl. Well 

 did Michelet term them "the insatiable nightmares of 

 the sea." 



Yet, but for them, how would such great creatures as 

 the sperm whale be fed ? Unable, from their bulk, to 

 capture small fish except by accident, and, by the absence 

 of a sieve of baleen, precluded from subsisting upon the 



