THE KRAKEN. 
33 
snapping off its masts, tearing down the yards, and on the 
point of dragging it to the bottom, if the crew had not suc- 
ceeded in cuttingf off its immense limbs with cutlasses and 
hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtain- 
ing information, for he was at one time an assistant in the 
geological department of the Museum of Natural History, 
in Paris ; and wrote a work on conchology,* besides that 
already referred to. But it appears to have been his de- 
liberate purpose to cajole the public ; for it is reported 
that he exclaimed to M. Defrance : " If my entangled 
ship is accepted, I will make my ' colossal poulpe ' over- 
throw a whole fleet." Accordingly we find him gravely 
declaring f that one of the great victories of the British 
navy was converted into a disaster by the monsters 
which are the subject of his history. He boldly asserted 
that the six men-of-war captured from the French by 
Admiral Rodney in the West Indies on the I2th of April, 
1782, together with four British ships detached from his 
fleet to convoy the prizes, were all suddenly engulphed in 
the waves on the night of the battle under such circum- 
stances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by 
colossal cuttles, and not by a gale or any ordinary casualty. 
Unfortunately for De Montfort, the inexorable logic of 
facts not only annihilates his startling theory, but demon- 
strates the reckless falsity of his plausible statements. The 
captured vessels did not sink on the night of the action, 
but were all sent to Jamaica to refit, and arrived there 
safely. Five months afterwards, however, a convoy of nine 
line-of-battle ships (amongst which were Rodney's prizes), 
one frigate, and about a hundred merchantmen, were dis- 
persed, whilst on their voyage to England, by a violent 
* ' Conchyliologie Syst^matique.' 
t * Hist. Nat. des Moll.,' vol. ii., pp. 358 to 368. 
D 
