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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 41. THE POULPS
For several days the Nautilus stayed away from the American coast.
It clearly didn't want to risk the tides of the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean Sea.
On April 16th, we saw Martinique and Guadeloupe from about thirty miles away.
I saw their high peaks for a moment.
The Canadian had hoped to carry out his plans in the Gulf by landing or by hailing small boats between islands.
He was very discouraged.
Escape would have been possible if Ned Land could have taken the boat without the Captain knowing.
But in the open sea, we couldn't even think about it.
The Canadian, Conseil, and I had a long talk about this.
For six months we had been prisoners on the Nautilus.
We had traveled 17,000 leagues, and as Ned Land said, there was no reason for it to end.
We couldn't hope for anything from the Captain of the Nautilus, only from ourselves.
Besides, for some time he had become more serious, more withdrawn, less friendly.
He seemed to avoid me, I rarely saw him.
Before, he had been happy to explain the underwater wonders to me.
Now he left me to my studies and didn't come to the saloon anymore.
What had changed him? For what reason?
For my part, I didn't want to keep my curious and new studies buried with me.
I now had the power to write the true book of the sea, and I wanted it published sooner or later.
The land nearest us was the Bahamas islands.
There were high underwater cliffs covered with large seaweeds.
It was eleven o'clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a sharp pricking like an ant's sting caused by the large seaweeds.
"Well," I said, "these are proper caves for poulps, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these monsters."
"What!" said Conseil.
"Cuttlefish, real cuttlefish of the cephalopod class?"
"No," I said, "poulps of huge size."
"I'll never believe that such animals exist," said Ned.
"Well," said Conseil, with the most serious expression in the world.
"I remember perfectly that I saw a large ship pulled under the waves by an octopus's arm."
"You saw that?" said the Canadian.
"Yes, Ned."
"With your own eyes?"
"With my own eyes."
"Where, may I ask, was that?"
"At St. Malo," answered Conseil.
"In the port?" said Ned, with irony.
"No, in a church," replied Conseil.
"In a church!" cried the Canadian.
"Yes, friend Ned. In a picture that showed the poulp in question."
"Good!" said Ned Land, bursting out laughing.
"He's quite right," I said.
"I've heard of this picture."
"But the subject comes from a legend, and you know what to think of legends when it comes to natural history."
"Besides, when it's a question of monsters, the imagination tends to run wild."
People think poulps can pull down ships, and Olaus Magnus speaks of an octopus a mile long, more an island than an animal.
"It's also said that the Bishop of Nidros was building an altar on a huge rock."
"When mass finished, the rock started to walk and returned to the sea."
"The rock was a poulp."
"Another Bishop, Pontoppidan, also speaks of a poulp on which a regiment of cavalry could march."
"Finally, the ancient naturalists speak of monsters whose mouths were like gulfs and which were too large to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar."
"But how much of these stories is true?" asked Conseil.
"Nothing, my friends."
"At least nothing that goes beyond the limit of truth into fable or legend."
"Still, there must be some basis for the imagination of the storytellers."
"We can't deny that poulps and cuttlefish of a large species exist, though they're smaller than the cetaceans."
"Aristotle stated the size of a cuttlefish as five cubits, or nine feet two inches."
"Our fishermen often see some that are more than four feet long."
"Some skeletons of poulps are kept in the museums of Trieste and Montpelier that measure two yards in length."
"Besides, according to the calculations of some naturalists, one of these animals only six feet long would have tentacles twenty-seven feet long."
"That would be enough to make a terrible monster."
"Do they fish for them these days?" asked Ned.
"If they don't fish for them, sailors at least see them."
"One of my friends, Captain Paul Bos of Havre, has often said that he met one of these monsters of huge size in the Indian seas."
"But the most amazing fact, which doesn't allow us to deny the existence of these giant animals, happened a few years ago, in 1861."
"What's the fact?" asked Ned Land.
"Here it's."
"In 1861, to the northeast of Teneriffe, near our latitude, the crew of the dispatch boat Alector saw a monstrous cuttlefish swimming."
"Captain Bouguer approached and attacked with harpoon and guns, but balls and harpoons slid over the soft flesh."
"After several attempts, the crew passed a slipknot around the mollusk's body, the noose slid to the tail fins and stopped."
"They tried to pull it on board, but its weight tore the tail off, and without that part it disappeared under the water."
"Really! Is that a fact?"
"An unquestionable fact, my good Ned. They proposed to name this poulp 'Bouguer's cuttlefish.'"
"How long was it?" asked the Canadian.
"Didn't it measure about six yards?" said Conseil, who, standing at the window, was examining the irregular curves of the cliff again.
"Exactly," I replied.
"Its head," continued Conseil, "wasn't it crowned with eight tentacles that beat the water like a nest of snakes?"
"Exactly."
"Didn't it have eyes, placed at the back of its head, that were very large?"
"Yes, Conseil."
"And wasn't its mouth like a parrot's beak?"
"Exactly, Conseil."
"Very well! No offense to master," he replied quietly, "if this isn't Bouguer's cuttlefish, it's at least one of its brothers."
I looked at Conseil, Ned Land hurried to the window.
"What a horrible beast!" he cried.
I looked in my turn and couldn't stop a gesture of disgust.
Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy of appearing in the legends of the marvelous.
It was a huge cuttlefish, eight yards long.
It swam across the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes.
Its eight arms, or rather feet, were fixed to its head and gave these animals the name cephalopod.
They were twice as long as its body and twisted like the hair of the Furies.
You could see the 250 air holes on the inner side of the tentacles.
The monster's mouth, a horned beak like a parrot's, opened and shut vertically.
Its tongue, a horny substance with several rows of pointed teeth, came out shaking from this real pair of shears.
What a freak of nature, a bird's beak on a mollusk!
Its spindle-like body formed a fleshy mass that might weigh 4,000 to 5,000 pounds.
Its changing color, which varied very quickly according to the animal's irritation, passed from livid gray to reddish brown.
What could be irritating this mollusk at such close range to the Nautilus?
No doubt the presence of the Nautilus, which was more dangerous than itself and on which its suckers or its jaws had no hold.
Yet what monsters these poulps are! What life the Creator has given them!
What strength in their movements! And they have three hearts!
Chance had brought us in front of this cuttlefish.
And I didn't want to lose the chance to study this example of cephalopods carefully.
I overcame the horror that I felt and, taking a pencil, began to draw it.
"Maybe this is the same one that the Alector saw," said Conseil.
"No," replied the Canadian, "because this one is whole, and the other had lost its tail."
"That's no reason," I replied.
"The arms and tails of these animals grow back again, and in seven years the tail of Bouguer's cuttlefish has no doubt had time to grow."
By this time other poulps appeared at the port light.
I counted seven, they formed a procession behind the Nautilus, and I heard their beaks grinding against the iron hull.
I continued my work, these monsters stayed in the water so still that they seemed motionless.
Suddenly the Nautilus stopped, a shock made it shake in every plate.
"Have we hit something?" I asked.
"In any case," replied the Canadian, "we'll be free, because we're floating."
The Nautilus was floating, no doubt, but it didn't move.
A minute passed, Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant, entered the drawing room.
I hadn't seen him for some time, he seemed sad.
Without noticing or speaking to us, he went to the panel, looked at the poulps, and said something to his lieutenant.
The lieutenant left, Soon the panels were shut.
The ceiling was lit, I went toward the Captain.
"A curious collection of poulps?" I said.
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Naturalist," he replied, "and we're going to fight them, man against beast."
I looked at him, I thought I hadn't heard correctly.
"Man against beast?" I repeated.
"Yes, sir. The screw is stopped. I think the horny jaws of one of the cuttlefish are caught in the blades. That's what's stopping us from moving."
"What are you going to do?"
"Rise to the surface and kill these creatures."
"A difficult task."
"Yes, indeed. The electric bullets are useless against the soft flesh, where they don't find enough resistance to explode. But we'll attack them with the hatchet."
"And the harpoon, sir," said the Canadian, "if you don't refuse my help."
"I'll accept it, Master Land."
"We'll follow you," I said, and following Captain Nemo, we went toward the central staircase.
There, about ten men with boarding hatchets were ready for the attack.
Conseil and I took two hatchets, Ned Land grabbed a harpoon.
The Nautilus had then risen to the surface.
One of the sailors, standing on the top ladder step, unscrewed the bolts of the panels.
But as soon as the screws were loosened, the panel rose with great force, clearly pulled by the suckers of a poulp's arm.
Immediately one of these arms slid like a snake down the opening, and twenty others were above it.
With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo cut this terrible tentacle, which slid wriggling down the ladder.
We were pushing each other to reach the platform.
Two other arms, lashing the air, came down on the sailor in front of Captain Nemo and lifted him with irresistible power.
Captain Nemo let out a cry and rushed out, we hurried after him.
One of these long arms slid through the opening.
What a scene! The platform was chaos, tentacles everywhere, cries, blood and ink.
The unhappy man, caught by the tentacle and fixed to the suckers, was swinging in the air at the will of this huge trunk.
He choked, he was suffocating, he cried, "Help! Help!" These words, spoken in French, shocked me!
I had a fellow countryman on board, maybe several!
That heartbreaking cry! I'll hear it all my life.
The unfortunate man was lost, Who could save him from that powerful grip?
However, Captain Nemo had rushed at the poulp, and with one blow of the axe had cut through one arm.
His lieutenant fought wildly against other monsters that crept on the sides of the Nautilus.
The crew fought with their axes, the Canadian, Conseil, and I buried our weapons in the fleshy masses.
A strong smell of musk filled the air, it was horrible!
For one moment, I thought the unhappy man, caught by the poulp, would be torn from its powerful suction.
Seven of the eight arms had been cut off.
Only one wriggled in the air, swinging the victim like a feather.
But just as Captain Nemo and his lieutenant threw themselves at it, the animal shot out a stream of black liquid.
We were blinded by it, When the cloud cleared, the cuttlefish had disappeared, and my unfortunate countryman with it.
Ten or twelve poulps now invaded the platform and sides of the Nautilus.
We rolled into the middle of this nest of snakes, which wriggled on the platform in waves of blood and ink.
It seemed as though these slimy tentacles sprang up like the heads of a hydra.
Ned Land's harpoon, with each strike, plunged into the staring eyes of the cuttlefish.
But my brave companion was suddenly knocked over by the tentacles of a monster he hadn't been able to avoid.
Ah, how my heart beat with emotion and horror!
The terrible beak of a cuttlefish was open over Ned Land.
The unhappy man would be cut in two.
I rushed to help him, but Captain Nemo was ahead of me.
His axe disappeared between the two huge jaws. Ned Land got up and plunged his harpoon into the poulp's triple heart.
"I owed myself this revenge!" said the Captain to the Canadian.
Ned bowed without replying, the fight had lasted a quarter of an hour.
The monsters, defeated and mutilated, left us at last and disappeared under the waves.
Captain Nemo, covered with blood, nearly exhausted, looked at the sea that had swallowed up one of his companions, and great tears gathered in his eyes.