Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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OBJECTS OF INTEREST BROUGHT HOME BY THE “CHALLENGER.”

Fig. 1.—Shell of Globigerina (highly magnified). Fig. 2.—Ophioglypha bullata (six times the size in nature). Fig. 3.—Euplectella Suberea (popularly “Venus’s Flower-basket”). Fig. 4.—Deidamia leptodactyla (a Blind Lobster).

(From “The Voyage of the Challenger,” by permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.)

The steam-corvette Alecton, when between Teneriffe and Madeira, fell in with a gigantic cuttle-fish, fifty feet long in the body, without counting its eight formidable arms covered with suckers. The head was of enormous size, out of all proportion to the body, and had eyes as large as plates. The other extremity terminated in two fleshy lobes or fins of great size. The estimated weight of the whole creature was 4,000 lbs., and the flesh was soft, glutinous, and of a reddish-brick colour. “The commandant, wishing, in the interests of science, to secure the monster, actually engaged it in battle. Numerous shots were aimed at it, but the balls traversed its flaccid and glutinous mass without causing it any vital injury. But after one of these attacks, the waves were observed to be covered with foam and blood, and—singular thing—a strong odour of musk was inhaled by the spectators. … The musket-shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons were employed, but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon, it dived under the ship and came up again at the other side. They succeeded, at last, in getting the harpoon to bite, and in passing a bowling-hitch round the posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to hoist it out of the water, the rope penetrated deeply into the flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head, with the arms and tentacles, dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought on board; they weighed about forty pounds. The crew were eager to pursue, and would have launched a boat, but the commander refused, fearing that the animal might capsize it. The object was not, in his opinion, one in which he could risk the lives of his crew.” M. Moquin Tandon, commenting on M. Berthelot’s recital, considers “that this colossal mollusc was sick and exhausted at the time by some recent struggle with some other monster of the deep, which would account for its having quitted its native rocks in the depths of the ocean. Otherwise it would have been more active in its movements, or it would have obscured the waves with the inky liquid which all the cephalopods have at command. Judging from its size, it would carry at least a barrel of this black liquid.”