Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/67

1, 1865.] to the amount of rotatory power your neck may possess, is not by any means extensive; one naturally grows restless, or perhaps gets a sharp twinge of cramp, and feels he must move. To accomplish this an arm is rested on the edge of the canoe, and you lift yourself just a little. A sudden heeling over, a splash, a frantic yell from the savages, with a lively consciousness that you are sitting up to your hips in water, recalls you at once to the indiscretion you have been guilty of. Add to all this a perpetual dread of being suddenly brained and scalped by the savage sitting behind, and you get a rough outline of canoeing.

Safely in, and safely seated, I started one bright summer morning from our barracks at Esquimalt (Van Island) to cross the harbour. The Indians were going after the Octopus, and I felt a strong curiosity to see how they caught him, at the same time to acquire a knowledge of his habits.

The anatomical structure of the Octopus is well known—his habits but little if at all.

The Octopus of our own seas is a mere dwarf as compared to the gigantic size he obtains in the land-locked harbours so common to the east side of Vancouver Island. These places are natural sea-nurseries, where the Octopus grows to an enormous size. Safe from heavy breakers, he enjoys life as in an aquarium.

His modes of locomotion are curious and varied; he is a good swimmer—using his eight arms as paddles, he rows himself along with ease and celerity; he can ramble at will through his pelagic parks, by converting his arms into legs marching on like a huge spider. He is a gymnast of the highest order: clinging to the wrack and sea-weed, goes about back downwards like a marine sloth. Of course he varies in size. I have measured the arm five feet long, and where it joins the central disc, as large as my wrist. Should he by chance wind his sucker-armed cable round a luckless bather, fatal would be the embrace. From watching him carefully, I do not think he often catches prey, on the ground on the rocks, but waits for them as a spider would, only that the Octopus converts himself into a net. Coiling one arm round the wrack, he stiffens out the other seven, and in this position you would hardly distinguish him from the brown sea-weed amongst which he is concealed. A shoal of fish come gaily on, threading their way through the sea-trees, two or three of them rub against the outstretched arms of the Octopus—fatal touch! As though a powerful galvanic shock passed through the fish and knocked him senseless, so does the arm of the Octopus paralyze its victim—then dragging the palsied fish to the centre of the disc, the beaked mouth seizes on it and sucks it in.

I feel sure that the Octopus possesses the power of numbing its prey; and the suckers along each ray are as much for the purpose of climbing and holding on with, as for detaining slippery captives. Tyrant and cannibal as he is, yet he has an enemy that hunts him with untiring pertinacity—that enemy is the Indian. He estimates the Octopus as we do turtle, and devours him with as much gusto and relish, only the redskin roasts his glutinous carcase instead of boiling. And now to catch him.

The Indian well knows, from long experience, that were the Octopus to get his huge arms over the side of the canoe, and at the same time a hold-fast on the wrack, he could just as easily upset the canoe as a child could a basket, but he takes care not to give him a chance; paddling the canoe slowly and quietly amongst the wrack, he steadily looks through the crystal water until his practised eye detects the Octopus, his great arms stiffened out, patiently biding his prey. Armed with a formidable spear carefully barbed, and about twelve feet in length, the savage passes it carefully through the water until within an inch or so of his great pear-shaped centre, then sends it in as deep as he can plunge it. Twisting and writhing with pain and passion, the monster coils his terrible arms round and round the spear; then the savage, resting the spear on the side of the canoe, keeps him well away and raises him to the surface of the water. He must be dealt warily with now, for he is dangerous! If he could get a holdfast on either savage or canoe, nothing save chopping him off piecemeal would be of any service; but the wily spearsman knows all this, and has ready another spear, long, smooth, unbarbed, and very sharp, and with this he stabs the Octopus where the arms join the body. I imagine the spear must break down the nervous centres giving motive power, for the stabbed arm is at once deprived of its strength and tenacity; the countless suckers, that held on with a force no human power could have overcome, relax their grip, and the arm hangs, a dead, lifeless mass of gelatinous matter.

Thus the Indian stabs and stabs until the Octopus, devoid of life and motion, is dragged into the canoe—a great quivering brown-looking lump—destined to supply a roast and a revel by the log fire of his red-skinned captors. 2