The Adventures of Billy Topsail

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER III

  _Describing the Haunts and Habits of Devil-Fish and Informing the Reader of Billy Topsail's Determination to Make a Capture at all Hazards_

  WHEN the Minister of Justice for the colony of Newfoundland went awayfrom Ruddy Cove by the bay steamer, he chanced to leave an Americanmagazine at the home of Billy Topsail's father, where he had passed thenight. The magazine contained an illustrated article on the giganticspecies of cephalopods[2] popularly known as devil-fish.

  Billy Topsail did not know what a cephalopod was; but he did know asquid when he saw its picture, for Ruddy Cove is a fishing harbour, andhe had caught many a thousand for bait. So when he found that to thelay mind a squid and a cephalopod were one and the same, save in size,he read the long article from beginning to end, doing the best he couldwith the strange, long words.

  So interested was he that he read it again; and by that time he hadlearned enough to surprise him, even to terrify him, notwithstandingthe writer's assurance that the power and ferocity of the creatures hadgenerally been exaggerated.

  He was a lad of sound common sense. He had never wholly doubted thetales of desperate encounters with devil-fish, told in the harbourthese many years; for the various descriptions of how the long,slimy arms had curled about the punts had rung too true to be quitedisbelieved; but he had considered them somewhat less credible thancertain wild yarns of shipwreck, and somewhat more credible than thebedtime stories of mermaids which the grandmothers told the children ofthe place.

  Here, however, in plain print, was described the capture of a giantsquid in a bay which lay beyond a point of land that Billy could seefrom the window.

  That afternoon Billy put out in his leaky old punt to "jig" squid forbait. He was so disgusted with the punt--so ashamed of the squat,weather-worn, rotten cast-off--that he wished heartily for a new oneall the way to the grounds. The loss of the _Never Give Up_ had broughthim to humiliating depths.

  But when he had once joined the little fleet of boats, he cheerfullythrew his grapnel into Bobby Lot's punt and beckoned Bobby aboard.Then, as together they drew the writhing-armed, squirting little squidsfrom the water, he told of the "big squids" which lurked in the deepwater beyond the harbour; and all the time Bobby opened his eyes widerand wider.

  "Is they just like squids?" Bobby asked.

  "But bigger," answered Billy. "Their bodies is so big as hogsheads.Their arms is thirty-five feet long."

  Bobby picked a squid from the heap in the bottom of the boat. It hadinstinctively turned from a reddish-brown to a livid green, the colourof sea-water; indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would havehad hard work to see it.

  He handled it gingerly; but the ugly little creature managed somehow totwine its slender arms about his hand, and swiftly to take hold with adozen cup-like suckers. The boy uttered an exclamation of disgust, andshook it off. Then he shuddered, laughed at himself, shuddered again. Amoment later he chose a dead squid for examination.

  "Leave us look at it close," said he. "Then we'll know what a realdevil-fish is like. Sure, I've been wantin' to know that for a long,long time."

  They observed the long, cylindrical body, flabby and cold, with thebroad, flap-like tail attached. The head was repulsively ugly--perhapsbecause of the eyes, which were disproportionately large, brilliant,and, in the live squid, ferocious.

  A group of arms--two long, slender, tentacular arms, and eightshorter, thicker ones--projected from the region of the mouth, which,indeed, was set in the centre of the ring they formed at the roots.They were equipped with innumerable little suckers, were flexible andactive, and as long as the head, body and tail put together.

  Closer examination revealed that there was a horny beak, like aparrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was acurious tube-like structure.

  "Oh, that's his squirter!" Billy explained. "When he wants to back uphe points that forward, and squirts out water so hard as he can; andwhen he wants to go ahead he points it backward, and does the samething. That's where his ink comes from, too, when he wants to make thewater so dirty nobody can see him."

  "What does he do with his beak?"

  "When he gets his food in his arms he bites out pieces with his beak.He hasn't any teeth; but he's got something just as good--a tongue likea rasp."

  "I wouldn't like to be cotched by a squid as big as a hogshead," Bobbyremarked, timidly.

  "Hut!" said Billy, grimly. "He'd make short work o' _you_! Why, b'y,they weighs half a ton apiece! I isn't much afraid, though," he added."They're only squid. Afore I read about them in the book I used tothink they was worse than they is--terrible ghostlike things. Butthey're no worse than squids, only bigger, and----"

  "They're bad enough for _me_," Bobby interrupted.

  "And," Billy concluded, "they only comes up in the night or whenthey're sore wounded and dyin'."

  "I'm not goin' out at night, if I can help it," said Bobby, with acanny shake of the head.

  "If they was a big squid come up the harbour to your house," saidBilly, after a pause, "and got close to the rock, he could put one o'they two long arms in your bedroom window, and----"

  "'Tis in the attic!"

  "Never mind that. He could put it in the window and feel around foryour bed, and twist that arm around you, and----"

  "I'd cut it off!"

  "Anyhow, that's how long they is. And if he knowed you was there, andwanted you, he could get you. But I'm not so sure that he _would_ wantyou. He couldn't see you, anyhow; and if he could, he'd rather have agood fat salmon."

  Bobby shuddered as he looked at the tiny squid in his hand, and thoughtof the dreadful possibilities in one a thousand times as big.

  "You leave them alone, and they'll leave you alone," Billy went on."But if you once make them mad, they can dart their arms out likelightning. 'Tis time to get, then!"

  "I'm goin' to keep an axe in my punt after this," said Bobby, "and if Isees an arm slippin' out of the water----"

  "'Tis as big as your thigh!" cried Billy.

  "Never mind. If I sees it I'll be able to cut it off."

  "If I sees one," said Billy, "I'm goin' to cotch it. It said in thebook that they was worth a lot to some people. And if I can sell mineI'm goin' to have a new punt."

  But although Bobby Lot and Billy Topsail kept a sharp lookout for giantsquids wherever they went, they were not rewarded. There was not somuch as a sign of one. By and by, so bold did they become, they huntedfor one in the twilight of summer days, even daring to pry into thedeepest coves and holes in the Ruddy Cove rocks.

  Notwithstanding the ridicule he had to meet, Bobby never ventured outin the punt without a sharp axe. He could not tell what time he wouldneed it, he said; and thus he formed the habit of making sure that itwas in its place before casting off from the wharf.

  As autumn drew near they found other things to think of; the big squidspassed out of mind altogether.

  "Wonderful queer," Billy said, long afterwards, "how things happen whenyou isn't expectin' them!"

  FOOTNOTE:

  [2] "The early literature of natural history has, from very remotetimes, contained allusions to huge species of cephalopods, oftenaccompanied by more or less fabulous and usually exaggerateddescriptions of the creatures. . . . The description of the 'poulpe,'or devil-fish, by Victor Hugo, in 'Toilers of the Sea,' with which somany readers are familiar, is quite as fabulous and unreal as any ofthe earlier accounts, and even more bizarre. . . . Special attentionhas only recently been called to the frequent occurrence of these 'bigsquids,' as our fishermen call them, in the waters of Newfoundland andthe adjacent coasts. . . . I have been informed by many other fishermenthat the 'big squids' are occasionally taken on the Grand Banks andused for bait. Nearly all the specimens hitherto taken appear to havebeen more or less disabled when first observed, otherwise they probablywould not appear at the surface in the daytime. From the fact thatthey have mostly come ashore in the night, I infer that they inhabitchiefly the very deep and co
ld fiords of Newfoundland, and come tothe surface only in the night."--From the "Report on the Cephalopodsof the Northeastern Coast of America," by A. E. Verrill. Extractedfrom a report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, issued by theGovernment Printing Office at Washington. In this report twenty-fivespecimens of the large species taken in Newfoundland are described indetail.