French River 
colour, with long tentacles growing out from 
the head end. The head end is spotted and 
speckled with bright colours, and up and down 
run lines of changing and iridescent hues, as 
though the blood in their transparent bodies 
were made of the essence of rainbows. Their 
conduct is as queer as their appearance, for 
when they are first pulled out of the water 
they squirt ink upon their captors, and that 
they are pulled out at all is entirely their own 
fault, for the fisherman but drops overboard a 
cylindrical piece of lead painted red with a row 
of hooks bent backward around the lower end. 
This object the squid embraces, wrapping his 
inner tentacles about it and so impaling himself. 
The instrument is not baited in any way, and 
for a squid to behave as he does toward it 
seems too absurd even for a squid. 
As soon as the tables were set up, the work 
of " dressing down " began in earnest. The 
cod were taken first and whisked through the 
process with great speed and no ceremony. A 
boy tossed the fish from boat to table. A man 
caught it by the head, ran his knife around the 
gills, broke its neck, slit it open down the 
belly, and sent it sliding over the greasy table 
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