第5章

These loathsome monsters--call them squids, or devil-fish, or what you will--would sometimes come and throw their horrible tentacles over the side of the frail craft from which the divers were working, and actually fasten on to the men themselves, dragging them out into the water.At other times octopuses have been known to attack the divers down below, and hold them relentlessly under water until life was extinct.One of our own men had a terribly narrow escape from one of these fearful creatures.I must explain, however, that occasionally when the divers returned from pearl-fishing, they used to rope all their little skiffs together and let them lie astern of the schooner.Well, one night the wind rose and rain fell heavily, with the result that next morning all the little boats were found more or less water-logged.Some of the Malays were told off to go and bale them out.Whilst they were at work one of the men saw a mysterious-looking black object in the sea, which so attracted his curiosity that he dived overboard to find out what it was.He had barely reached the water, however, when an immense octopus rose into view, and at once made for the terrified man, who instantly saw his danger, and with great presence of mind promptly turned and scrambled back into the boat.

The terrible creature was after him, however, and to the horror of the onlookers it extended its great flexible tentacles, enveloped the entire boat, man and all, and then dragged the whole down into the clear depths.The diver's horrified comrades rushed to his assistance, and an attempt was made to kill the octopus with a harpoon, but without success.Several of his more resourceful companions then dived into the water with a big net made of stout twine, which they took right underneath the octopus, entangling the creature and its still living prey.The next step was to drag up both man and octopus into the whale-boat, and this done, the unfortunate Malay was at length seized by his legs, and dragged by sheer force out of the frightful embrace, more dead than alive, as you may suppose.However, we soon revived him by putting him into a very hot bath, the water being at such a temperature as actually to blister his skin.It is most remarkable that the man was not altogether drowned, as he had been held under water by the tentacles of the octopus for rather more than two minutes.But, like all the Malays of our party, this man carried a knife, which he used to very good purpose on the monster's body when first it dragged him under the water.These repeated stabs caused the creature to keep rolling about on the surface, and the unhappy man was in this way enabled to get an occasional breath of air;otherwise he must infallibly have been drowned.It was a horrible-looking creature, with a slimy body, and a hideous cavity of a mouth.It is the tentacles of the creature that are so dreaded, on account of the immense sucking power which they possess.

After this incident the divers always took a tomahawk with them on their expeditions, in order to lop off the tentacles of any octopus that might try to attack them in the boats.And, by the way, we saw many extraordinary creatures during our cruise.I myself had a serious fright one day whilst indulging in a swim.

We had anchored in about five fathoms, and as I was proceeding leisurely away from the vessel at a slow breast stroke, a monstrous fish, fully twenty feet long, with an enormous hairy head and fierce, fantastic moustaches, suddenly reared up out of the water, high into the air.I must say that the sight absolutely unmanned me for the moment, and when this extraordinary creature opened his enormous mouth in my direction, I gave myself up for lost.It did not molest me, however, and I got back to the ship safely, but it was some little time before I recovered from the terrible fright.

Occasionally too we were troubled with sharks, but the Malays did not appear to be very much afraid of them.Their great dread was the ground shark, which lay motionless at the bottom of the sea, and gave no indication of his presence.The result was that occasionally the divers would sink down to their work quite unknowingly almost by the side of one of these fearful creatures, and in such cases the diver rarely escaped without injury of some kind.With regard to the ordinary shark, however, our divers actually sought them.Their method of capturing them was almost incredible in its simplicity and daring.Three or four of our divers would go out in a boat and allow themselves to drift into a big school of sharks.Then one man, possessed of more nerve than the rest, would bend over the side and smartly prick the first one he came across with a spear taken out for the purpose.The moment he had succeeded in this the other occupants of the boat would commence yelling and howling at the top of their voices, at the same time beating the water with their paddles, in order to frighten away the sharks.This invariably succeeded, but, amazing to relate, the shark that had been pricked always came back alone a few minutes later to see what it was that had pricked him.Care has to be taken not to inflict a very severe wound, because the moment the other sharks taste the blood of a wounded companion, they will immediately turn upon him and eat him.When the inquisitive shark is seen coming in the direction of the boat, the Malay who has accosted him in this way quietly jumps overboard, armed only with his small knife and a short stick of hard wood, exactly like a butcher's skewer, about five inches in length, and pointed at each end.