48 
THE ELECTRIC EEL. 
If the rational basis of legend and fable is worth 
exploring at all, we may well ask why the possession 
of electric power, the most strange, and until recently 
the most inexplicable, attribute of any of the inhabit- 
ants of the water, does not play a greater part in the 
marvellous narratives of ancient voyages ? The 
remora , or sucking-fish, magnified a thousand times 
in imaginations excited by a world of strange and new 
experience, was the besetting foe of mariners in 
Northern waters. Clinging to the keel, it kept their 
barques for weeks in the mare pigrum , the sluggish 
sea of drifting ice. Whales, rising like sandbanks 
above the waves, tempted the weary crews to make 
fast to their treacherous bulk, and then plunged to the 
bottom, carrying with them both ships and sailors. 
Gigantic squids thrust their slimy arms down the 
hatchways, and plucked sleeping seamen from their 
berths and strangled them before their comrades’ 
eyes. But the “ torpedo ’’—the paralyzer — though as 
well-known then to the fishers of the Mediterranean 
as it is now known, under the name of the “ cramp- 
