Page:Under the Sun.djvu/295

Rh said of them that they prefer “the excitement of the imagination to the satisfaction of the judgment.”

For monster cuttle-fishes, however, the public has the permission of science to believe anything it likes; and, in fact, the more the better. It may swell out the bag-like bodies of the poulpe to any dimensions consistent with the containing capacities of an ocean, and pull out their arms until, like Denys de Montford’s octopus, they are able to twist one tentacle round each of the masts of a line-of-battle ship, and, holding on with the rest to the bottom of the sea, to engulf the gallant vessel with all sail set. Science is helpless to oppose the belief in such monsters, for they are scientifically possible, and, from the sizes already recorded, there is no limit reasonably assignable to their further extension, so that everybody is at liberty to revel “by authority” in cuttle-fishes as big as possible. The Victorian octopus referred to above measured only eight feet, but this proved almost sufficient to kill a strong man, while the body belonging to a specimen of such dimensions would have been quite heavy enough, had the arms once fairly grappled the victim, to sink him to the bottom of the sea, where, anchoring itself by its suckers to a rock in the sea-bed, the monster could have eaten its prey at leisure. The octopus, moreover, is very active, as the nature of its usual food — fishes and crustaceans — requires it should be; and the danger, therefore, to man, from the huge specimens which travellers have recorded — that of M. Sander Rang, for instance, the body of which was as large as “a large cask” — would be very terrible indeed; but fortunately gigantic specimens, though indisputably existing, are not common on populous coasts.