CHAPTER IV.
THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT.

Bearing in mind that the famous story of “The Toilers of the Sea” should be regarded as a romance and not as a scientific treatise, I will now endeavour to compare the “devil-fish” of the author with the octopus of nature, and to indicate the points on which M. Hugo’s representation of his “monster” is either substantially correct, partly true, or entirely unreal.

His description of the seizure of Gilliatt by the pieuvre shows that he was tolerably well acquainted with its habits, mode of attack, and external form. The half terrifying, half disgusting grasp of one of the animal’s sucker-furnished arms, “supple as leather, tough as steel, cold as night;” the issuing of a second from the crevice, “like a tongue from out a mouth,” and the successive application of a third, fourth, and fifth, to various parts of his body, whilst the other three retained firm hold of the rock, is powerfully, and, so far, correctly, depicted, if highly-coloured. And, although, when the octopus desires to alter the position of the suckers and to change its hold, it generally effects that by an instantaneous relaxation and renewal of the suction, by protrusion or retraction of the muscular piston within each, yet the gliding of the cupping discs over the surface of a man’s wet skin is also in accordance with possibility, for I have tested it with a living octopus on my own arm. This will be easily understood by anyone who has watched the movements of the entomostracous parasites of fishes. The so-called river-louse, Argulus foliaceus, which infests all freshwater fishes, can run over their scales without loosening the hold of the two great suckers with which it is furnished; and others which, like Caligus and Lepeotheirus, have a water-tight carapace with a flexible margin, are able to move rapidly over the body of the fish in the same way.

In his relation of the manner in which the octopus captures its prey, the novelist is therefore substantially in accord with nature. The points on which he chiefly errs, are—

1st. The structure, use, capability, and effect on its victim, of its arms and suckers.

2nd. Its general organisation.

3rd. Its mode of progression when swimming.

4th. The manner in which it devours and digests its food.

The arms are described as “encircling Gilliatt’s whole body, cutting into his ribs like cord; ... forming a ligature about his stomach; ... enfolding and constricting his diaphragm like straps; producing such compression that he could hardly breathe; ... his body almost disappearing under the folds of this horrible bandage; its knots garotting him, its contact paralysing him.” The suckers are represented as being “like so many lips trying to drink your blood; ... they bury themselves to the depth of an inch in the flesh of their prisoner; ... on contact with them your muscles swell, the fibres are wrenched, and your blood gushes forth, and mixes horribly with the lymph of the mollusc.”

The whole of this is fallacious. The arms of the octopus are not used as weapons of constriction, compression, or suffocation. They are eight radiating, supple, tapering thongs, in ordinary specimens from eighteen inches to two feet long, on each of which are mounted, in a double row, numerous sucking discs, which decrease in size towards the tips of the limbs, and act as so many dry cupping-glasses. There are normally about 240 of these suckers on each arm, making a total of about 1,920. I have counted more in some individuals. M. Hugo gives their number as “fifty on each arm, 400 in all;” so on this point he very much understates his case.

The cups themselves, by their internal mechanism for air exhaustion, and consequent pressure of the outer atmosphere, adhere firmly to any substance to which they are applied, whether stone, fish, crustacean, or flesh of man; but in the octopus they have no power to puncture or lacerate the skin, or to cause blood to flow. They are merely pneumatically prehensile organs, by which the animal’s prey is caught and held; not by “harpooning,” as the novelist supposes, but by their atmospheric adhesion to the surface of its body. In this genus the sucking discs are composed of a muscular membrane, the circumference of which is thick and fleshy, and in some species cartilaginous, but in all unarmed, and only adapted to secure close, air-tight contact with any object it may touch. When experimenting on the holding force of an octopus I have allowed it to fix its suckers firmly on my arm and the back of my hand, and by pretending to try to pull them away from its grasp have caused it to exert its utmost power of resistance and retention. The only effect of this has been that the vacuum produced an almost indistinguishable circular mark, corresponding with the edge of the larger discs, and not nearly so distinct as would be caused by the application of a glass tube to the skin, and the partial exhaustion of the air in it by drawing it from the other end by the mouth and tongue. In some of the Cephalopods the outer circle of the cups is a horny ring, sharply serrated or dentated around its edge; and in others—for instance, Onychoteuthis—the centre of each cup is provided with a sharp, strong hook, capable of being extended or sheathed, like the claws of a cat, which is plunged deeply into the flesh of slippery prey for the better security of its hold; but the cuttle-fishes thus furnished are, unlike the octopus, habitually swimmers, instead of rock-crawlers. The sessile arms of the octopods are considerably longer than those of the decapods, or ten-armed cuttle-fishes; but the latter have, in addition to the eight corresponding limbs, two long tentacular arms, which, in some genera, are marvellous in the perfection of their compound apparatus for securing and holding a struggling captive. This arrangement is well suited to their habits and mode of life. Animals purely swimmers, and which hunt and overtake their prey by speed, would be impeded by having to drag after them a bundle of lengthy appendages trailing heavily astern. But a long reach of arm is an advantage, instead of a hindrance, to the octopus; for, although it can swim on occasion, its ordinary habit is, either to rest suspended to the side of a rock, to which it clings with the suckers of several of its arms, in the position shewn in the frontispiece, or to remain lurking in some favourite cranny; its body thrust for protection and concealment well back in the interior of the recess; its bright eyes keenly on the watch; three or four of its limbs firmly attached to the walls of its hiding-place—the others gently waving, gliding, and feeling about in the water, as if to maintain its vigilance, and keep itself always on the alert, and in readiness to pounce on any unfortunate wayfarer that may pass near its den. To small fish, crustacean or mollusc, the slightest contact with even one of those lithe arms is fatal. Instantaneously as pull of trigger brings down a bird, or touch of electric wire explodes a torpedo or a mining fuse, the pistons of the series of suckers are simultaneously drawn inward, the air is removed from the pneumatic holders, and a vacuum created in each; the victim strives to escape; a further retraction of the central part of the disc makes all secure; and, as arm after arm, containing a perfect mitrailleuse of inverted air-guns, takes horrid hold, battery after battery of them is brought to bear, and the pressure of the air is so great that nothing can effect the relaxation of their retentive power but the destruction of the air pump that works them, or the closing of the throttle-valve by which they are connected with it.[12]

Desiring to have a better view than I had previously been able to obtain of that which follows the seizure of a crab by an octopus, I fastened one to a string, by which an attendant was to lower it in the water close to the glass, whilst I stood watching in front. The crab had hardly descended to the depth of two feet before an octopus for which it was not intended, and which I had not observed (so exactly had he assumed the hue of the surface to which he clung), shot out like a rocket from one side of the tank, opened his membranous umbrella, shut up the suspended crab within it, and darted back again to the ledge of rock on which he had been lying in ambush. There he held on, with the crab firmly pressed between his body and the stone work. As this was not what I wished, I directed my assistant to gently try to pull the bait away from him. As soon as he felt the strain, he took a firm grasp of the rock with all the suckers of seven of his arms, and, stretching the eighth aloft, coiled it round the tautened line, the suckers actually closing on the line also, as a caterpillar’s foot gripes a thin twig, or a cobbler’s leather pad folds round his thread when he is making a wax-end. It then became a game of “pull devil, pull baker,” and the “devil-fish” won it. Noticing several jerks on the string, I thought at first they were given by the man overhead, and told him not to use too much force; but he called out, “It’s not me, sir, it’s the octopus: I can’t move him; and he’s pulling so hard that, if I don’t let go, he’ll break the line.” “Hold on, then, and let him break it,” I replied. Tug! tug! dragged the tough, strong arm of the octopus; and at the third tug the line broke, and the crab was all his own. The twine was that used for mending the seine net, and was therefore not particularly weak.

Although this experiment furnished a fresh illustration of the holding power of an octopus, it had not taught me exactly that which I wanted to know. I wished to be underneath that umbrella with the crab, or (which was decidedly preferable) to be able to see what happened beneath it without getting wet. My plan, therefore, was to procure the seizure of the crab against the front glass, instead of against the rock-work. Our next endeavour was successful. A second crab was so fastened that the string could be withdrawn if desired, and was lowered near to a great male octopus, who generally dwelt in a nook in the west front corner of the tank. He was sleepy, and not very hungry, and required a great deal of tempting to rouse him to activity; but the sight of his favourite food overcame his laziness, and, after some demonstrative panting, puffing, and erection of his tubercles, he lunged out an arm to seize the precious morsel. It was withdrawn from his reach; and so, at last, he turned out of bed, rushed at it, and got it under him against the plate-glass, just as I desired. In a second the crab was completely pinioned. Not a movement, not a struggle was visible or possible: each leg, each claw, was grasped all over by suckers—enfolded in them—stretched out to its full extent by them. The back of the carapace was covered all over with the tenacious vacuum-discs, brought together by the adaptable contraction of the limb, and ranged in close order, shoulder to shoulder, touching each other; whilst, between those which dragged the abdominal plates towards the mouth, the black tip of the hard, horny beak was seen for a single instant protruding from the circular orifice in the centre of the radiation of the arms, and, the next, had crunched through the shell, and was buried deep in the flesh of the victim.

The action of an octopus when seizing its prey for its necessary food is very like that of a cat pouncing on a mouse, and holding it down beneath its paws. The movement is as sudden, the scuffle as brief, and the escape of the prisoner even less probable. The fate of the crab is not, really, more terrible than that of the mouse, or of a minnow swallowed by a perch; but there is a repulsiveness about the form, colour, and attitudes of its captor which invests it with a kind of tragic horror.

In the next chapter the author writes:—

So says the novelist. The naturalist knows that it has a complete and perfect muscular organisation; muscles which serve to retract and depress the funnel, bundles of strong muscles passing along the arms and branching to each of the suckers, within which other fasciculi of muscular fibres converge from the circumference to the centre, and by their contraction produce the vacuum which gives to the animal its power of adhesion,—muscles all over its body, and a mass of muscles of such strength to work the powerful beak, that if anyone, believing the fictionist, were to place his finger in the small circular orifice in the centre of the base of the arms, he would possibly learn practically that it is not “an empty flask with nothing in it.” A sharp nip might perhaps teach him that it has not only muscles, but a mouth and head also. For just within the oral cavity lie, retracted and hidden, but ready for use when wanted, a pair of horny mandibles which bite vertically, like the beak of a parrot or turtle, except that the lower mandible is the longest and overlaps the upper, and are so hard that they can not only tear the softer animals the octopus is able to catch, but also break up the shells of lobsters, crabs, and mussels, which are its usual food. The head contains a brain, from which arises the system of nerves; and the animal has a sense of smell, and organs of hearing and taste, besides those which are apparent on its exterior, namely, of sight and touch. Instead of having “no blood,” it is furnished with a complete circulatory apparatus consisting of one systemic and two branchial hearts, arteries which distribute the blood through all parts of the body, and a system of veins or canals by which it returns towards the gills, of which breathing organs the animal has two—one on each side. By the alternate expansion and contraction of the bladder-like mantle-sac—an action resembling that of a pair of bellows—the water is pumped into contact with these gills, which convey to the blood the oxygen contained in it; and when its life-giving, purifying gas has been extracted from it, it is expelled by the muscular, valved funnel, or syphon tube, which has also another function, to be presently described. Far from being “a skin with nothing inside it,” from the beak and mouth (within which is a tongue like a rasp, having recurved spines or teeth) is continued the alimentary canal, œsophagus, crop, gizzard, stomach, and intestines; and within this so-called “empty pouch” are also the liver, and the organs of reproduction and respiration. The “tentacles,” or arms, cannot be “turned inside out like the fingers of a glove.” On making a section across one of them, it will be seen that it is composed of close muscles, the fibres of some of which run longitudinally, and others transversely. The arm, therefore, is more like the strong flexible lash of a stout hunting whip than the finger of a glove, and is solid, except that it has a perforation along the centre of its axis for the lodgment of its nerve and artery.

The author accurately describes the action and movement of the octopus, and its utilisation of its eight arms when crawling at the bottom, or on ledges of rocks. The globose body is then turned upward, the mouth downward, and the arms sprawl along, and by grappling some fresh object drag the body after them. But he is mistaken concerning its mode of progression when swimming. After stating that in swimming, it, so to speak, sheaths and draws close together its arms, which is quite true, he continues:—

That which M. Hugo supposes to be the head is the body of the animal. He appears to have received this impression from Pliny,[13] who writes:—“The head, which is directed obliquely when they swim, is, in the living animal, hard and distended like a balloon.” The cuttle-fishes, and the octopus amongst them, propel themselves rapidly backward, when swimming, by the forcible expulsion from the funnel, in sudden and frequent jets, of the water drawn in at the branchial, or gill openings. Thus the organs of respiration become those of locomotion as well, and the funnel has also another function, being the orifice from which the excreta are expelled. It has been asserted by various writers—and the statement has been repeated by many able naturalists—that the octopus swims by vigorous flappings of the expanded membrane which extends from the sheath of the mouth along the arms, and connects the bases of the latter like the web of a duck’s foot. It is true that this sometimes, though very rarely, takes place, but its proper and usual mode of progression is with the body in advance, the arms closely packed together, and directed backward horizontally in its wake, whilst the jets of water, pumped out at frequent intervals from the funnel, propel it at a considerable speed. I have had opportunities of watching the habits of at least a hundred individuals of this species, yet have only three or four times seen them progress, when swimming, by powerful contraction of the web-like membrane, and then but for a very short distance. Still less frequently does the octopus reverse its usual course; but I have twice seen one swim with its arms extended in advance of it, by bending the syphon tube beneath its body so as to present the orifice in a direction exactly contrary to its normal position.

M. Hugo forcibly refers to the remarkable property of rapidly changing its colour possessed by this animal. He writes:—

When quiescent, the general tone of colour of the octopus is a mottled brown, but it assimilates itself as much as possible to the rock to which for the time it may be holding. The moment it commences to swim it assumes a deeper hue, which usually becomes a dark, dingy red, but sometimes tends to purple. Mr. Darwin, in his delightful “Journal of Researches made during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle,” mentions his having noticed its endeavour to escape detection by the use of this chameleon-like power of changing colour so quickly as to cause it to vary with the nature of the ground over which it passes. This is effected in the same manner as the similar mutation of colour in the chameleon. Through the thin and transparent outer skin are visible cells in the inner layer beneath it, which contain pigment-matter of yellow, blue, red, and brown. By the contraction and expansion of the cells, prominence is given to one or another of these colours, at the will of the owner; and not only do the spots appear, and fade, and alternate in position, but, like human beings, the octopus turns pale when exhausted, and flushes red under the influence of anger or excitement. A curious play of colour, which I have elsewhere compared with the flashing and dying out of sparks in tinder, often takes place on the skin of the cephalopods by the continued action of the pigment cells, long after the death of the animal. The ancients were well acquainted with this colour-changing habit of the octopus. Aristotle mentions it, and Oppian describes it as follows:—

It was also frequently referred to by other writers. Athenæus quotes Theognis of Megara as saying in his Elegies:—

and Ion the tragedian, who wrote in his “Phœnix”:—

It was also the subject of a maxim equivalent to our “When you’re at Rome, do as Rome does.” A proverb cited by Clearchus runs thus:—

M. Hugo poetically alludes to the phosphorescent glow said to be emitted by the octopus in the dark:—

I have never been fortunate enough to witness the exhibition of this phosphorescence by the living octopus, although in dead specimens, as is the case with other marine animals, it becomes apparent as soon as decomposition has commenced; but D’Orbigny mentions it, and Mr. Darwin says, “I observed that one which I kept in the cabin was slightly phosphorescent in the dark.”[14] No doubt concerning this can, therefore, exist; for a more competent observer, or more accurate recorder of facts than Mr. Darwin, never put pen to paper.

In his description of the manner in which the devil-fish absorbs its victim, the author of “The Toilers of the Sea” releases his ardent imagination from the few restraining ties by which it was bound to reality. He writes:—

M. Hugo fortunately gives us the means of estimating the size of the body of the octopus which attacked Gilliatt. He tells us that its arms were “nearly a metre (thirty-nine inches) long.” None of quite so great dimensions have, I believe, been found in the English Channel, but it is not impossible that such exist. Granting this, the body of such an octopus would not be very much larger than a soda-water bottle or a Florence-flask, such as olive-oil is sold in: and so the “horrible bag, which is a monster,” and into which you are to be inhaled and drawn alive, is but a small affair after all. The plain truth is, that the octopus and other cephalopods obtain and eat their food very much like the rapacious birds. They are the falcons of the sea. Some of them, like Onychoteuthis, strike their prey with talons and suckers also; others, like the octopus, lay hold of it with suckers alone; but they all tear the flesh with their beaks, and swallow and digest their food in as unromantic a fashion as does hawk or vulture.

But it is when the author indulges in what he is pleased to call “philosophical meditation” on such animals that he arrives at the highest point of hyperbolical mystery. He tells us:—

To analyse this is beyond my powers. One can only wonder what it all means. The language is sententious, and would, no doubt, be impressive if it were not incomprehensible. It reminds one of Mr. Maccabe’s “Welsh sermon,” which, delivered with solemn earnestness, rolls forth in grandly sonorous tones, but has not a word of Welsh or sense in it; or of the “nonsense-problem” which Mark Twain says was propounded to him by Artemus Ward, and which seemed so full of thought and so clearly put that he blamed his “wooden head” because he got into a hopeless tangle over it, until he found he had been entrapped into pondering over “a string of plausibly worded sentences that did not mean anything under the sun.”

Let us now take evidence concerning the dimensions to which the octopus is known to attain, and the degree in which it may be regarded as dangerous to man.

An octopus from our own coasts having arms two feet in length may be considered a rather large specimen; and Dr. J. E. Gray, who was always most kindly ready to place at the disposal of any sincere inquirer the vast store of knowledge laid up in his wonderful memory, told me that “there is not one in the British museum which exceeds this size, or which would not go into a quart pot, body, arms and all.” The largest British specimen I have hitherto seen had arms 2 ft. 6 in. long.

If, however, the octopus seldom or never arrives at a length of arm of three feet on the northern coasts of France, we have sufficient evidence that it exceeds it on her southern borders, and along the Spanish and Italian shores of the Mediterranean.

M. Verany, of Nice, an able naturalist, mentions having seen an octopus which weighed 33 lbs. and measured three metres from tip to tip of its outstretched arms. This would make the length of each arm about four-and-a-half feet. A fisherman who noticed it affixed to the mole of the port of Nice had the hardihood to grasp it with his hands, and made himself master of it, though not without much difficulty.

Mr. Sylvanus Hanley, the well-known conchologist, and joint author with Professor Edward Forbes of their standard work on the British Mollusca, who passes every winter in Italy, has personally informed me that there are living in the harbour of Leghorn several octopods having arms at least four feet long, and as thick at their base as a man’s wrist. They lie with their bodies squeezed into, and hidden in, crevices in the stone-work of the mole and sea-wall, two or three of their arms extended and waving about in the water in readiness to seize passing prey, and the others holding fast to the blocks of stone. Mr. Hanley says that his son, who is a practised shore-hunter, and no coward, having frequent occasion, whilst in search of shells, to climb along a ledge of the rough masonry near the surface of the water, just beneath which was the lurking-place of one of these great creatures, was for some time afraid to pass the spot, in consequence of the animal’s formidable appearance; for, as he approached, it would thrust one or two of its disc-studded arms out of water, and stretch them towards him in a threatening manner, in its endeavours to reach him. The Italian divers and bathers are said to fear these creatures.

My deceased friend John Keast Lord gives in his book, “The Naturalist in British Columbia,” some particulars of the dimensions attained by the octopus in North-Western America. He writes:—“The octopus, as seen on our own coasts (of England), although even here called a ‘man-sucker’ by the fishermen, is a mere Tom Thumb—a tiny dwarf—as compared with the Brobdingnagian proportions he attains in the sunny bays and long inland canals of Vancouver’s Island, as well as on the mainland. These places afford lurking-dens, strongholds, and natural sea-nurseries, where the octopus grows to an enormous size, fattens, and wages war with insatiable ferocity on all and everything it can catch. The size, of course, varies. I have seen and measured the arm five feet long, and as large at the base, where it joins the central disc, as my wrist.” He adds that the Indians, when spearing them for food, take care to keep them at a distance till they have stabbed them to death; knowing that if an octopus were once to get some of its huge arms over the side of the canoe, it could as easily haul it over as a child could upset a basket. But we know that a canoe is very crank, and easily upset.

I have often been asked whether an octopus of the ordinary size can really be dangerous to bathers. Decidedly “Yes,” in certain situations. The octopus would not seize a man for the purpose of devouring him; nor do I believe that the act would be prompted by a deliberate intention to drown him, that his dead body might become an attractive bait for crabs, which are the animal’s favourite food; but rather by an instinctive desire to lay hold on anything moving within reach. The holding power of its numerous suckers is enormous. It is almost impossible forcibly to detach it from its adhesion to a rock or the flat bottom of a tank; and if a large one happened to fix one or more of its strong, tough arms on the leg of a swimmer whilst the others held firmly to a rock, I doubt if the man could disengage himself under water by mere strength, before being exhausted. Fortunately, it can be made to relax its hold by grasping it tightly round the “throat” (if I may so call it), and it may be well that this should be known.

That men are occasionally drowned by these creatures is, unfortunately, a fact too well attested. In August, 1867, the Genoa Gazette mentioned that a carter of Sampierdarena, who had gone to bathe near the reef of San Andria, was seized by an octopus, which, in spite of all his efforts, dragged him under water and drowned him. Not one of the bathers who witnessed the occurrence dared to go to the assistance of the unfortunate man.

Admiral Baillie Hamilton has kindly furnished me with some information on the subject. He tells me that in his time, many years ago, it was an understood thing that there existed amongst the rocks of Gibraltar Bay an octopus of large size; and that during the last half-century one soldier at least of the garrison has been drowned whilst bathing there by being grasped under water by one of these “devil-fishes.”

Major Newsome, R.E., has also been so kind as to send me the following description of an incident which happened to himself.

“In the years 1856-7,” he writes, “I was stationed at East London, a landing place about 900 miles from the Cape, up the east coast of Africa;—I speak from memory, having no map at hand. It is a rock-bound coast with the exception of the river’s mouth, which consists of a small space of sand. The landing is most dangerous, and, conducted in surf boats, hatched over, is only then practicable in very calm weather. The ordinary practice amongst the officers, both for comfort and saving of labour, is to bathe on the sea shore. Such was my custom each morning. There was one quadrangular cavity in the rocks which, at low water and in calm weather, formed a very desirable bath; but in rough weather, or at any time of tide except near about low water, it was unapproachable. At the best of times it was generally in a boil, and I have known a strong swimmer washed clean out of it on to the adjoining rocks, cut most grievously about the body by barnacles. Nevertheless, we mostly took a dip there when practicable, on account of the freshness of the water. At other times the plunge took place in smooth pools left in the rocks by the receding tide, which, though not quite so fresh, yet formed a very acceptable bath. One morning I took a header into one of these pools, which was, perhaps, 20 feet long, 7 to 8 feet wide, and deep in the centre—8 or 9 feet. As I swam from one end to the other, I was horrified at feeling something around my ancle, and made for the side as speedily as I could. I thought at first it was only seaweed; but as I landed, and trod with my foot on the rock, my disgust was heightened at feeling a fleshy and slippery substance under me. I was, I confess, alarmed, and so, apparently, was the beast on whom I trod, and whom, I suspect, I thereby discomfited, as he quickly detached himself and made again for the water. Some fellow-bathers, whom I hailed, came to my assistance, and with a boat-hook, on to which the brute clung, he was, eventually, safely landed. When extended he would have filled a hoop of five feet diameter. The grasp of an ordinary sized octopus holding to a rock would, I suppose, in lat. 30°, be not less than 30 lb. to 40 lb. The floating power of a man is between 5 lb. and 6 lb., and it takes a very strong swimmer to convey an ordinary fowling-piece, which weighs only 7 lb., across a river, dry. Had I not kept mid-channel, I believe it would have been a life-and-death struggle between myself and the beast on my ancle. In the open water I was the best man; but near the bottom or sides, which I could not have reached with my arms, but which he could have reached with his, he would, certainly, have drowned me.”

Major Newsome has not over-estimated the holding power of an octopus. One in the Brighton Aquarium was seen dragging towards it a huge stone, from 40 lb. to 50 lb. in weight. It is not uncommon for one to haul up to a ledge of rock, four or five feet from the bottom, two or three heavy oysters simultaneously; and it unfortunately happened in the early days of the Institution, and before precautions were taken to avert such accidents, that an octopus drew up, by night, the waste-valve of his tank, and let all the water run out of it; thus, by his strength, like Samson at Gaza, bringing death upon himself and all his companions.