Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/362

348 where, with its powerful iron-like beak, it crushes the helpless form, and swallows or drinks it down, as Victor Hugo says.

My own experience with these creatures has been principally in the Bermudas. They are there caught in basket-traps, formed of wood. With a trap baited with mussel, crab, or lobster, of which the octopus is particularly fond, we row along the island-shore, among the more rocky parts, until we discover some indication of the animal's retreat. Their hiding-places can only be discovered by experts, but one of the trails by which they are traced is the presence of dead shells in unusual quantities, particularly skeletons of crabs, which will be pretty certainly seen near the water's edge, or at the mouth of the cave inhabited by a "devil." The clearness of the waters greatly aids in the search. When a promising location is reached, we throw overboard the trap, which sinks to the bottom of some ledge, or rests upon a reef of coral. A rope, which is attached to it, is secured to a buoy to mark its place on the surface of the sea, and it is left for twenty-four hours. Then we return and haul it up, and, if the place of deposit has been well chosen, we shall soon see the long arms of Mr. Devil protruding through the basket, searching and stretching in all directions, seeking to understand how it is that positions have become so reversed—that he is the captured instead of the capturing party. His color changes with anger and vexation, and his body then displays numerous bunches or tubercles, which always appear when the animal anticipates danger.

The trap being opened, we seize him quickly by what we must call neck, the portion between the head and trunk, while his eight arms or legs, as you may choose to call them, are struggling and twisting in all directions, sometimes becoming attached to our own arms and twining



about them. Those which I caught and handled had arms of remarkable softness and suppleness, so that their contact felt more like a running liquid upon my flesh than a structural substance; and, indeed, though so formidable under certain circumstances, the preponderance of fluidity in their composition may be judged from the fact that I