Читать книгу The Adventures of Billy Topsail - Duncan Norman - Страница 4

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 away from Ruddy Cove by the bay steamer, he chanced to leave an American magazine at the home of Billy Topsail's father, where he had passed the night. The magazine contained an illustrated article on the gigantic species of cephalopods2 popularly known as devil-fish.

Billy Topsail did not know what a cephalopod was; but he did know a squid when he saw its picture, for Ruddy Cove is a fishing harbour, and he had caught many a thousand for bait. So when he found that to the lay 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 could with the strange, long words.

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

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

Here, however, in plain print, was described the capture of a giant squid in a bay which lay beyond a point of land that Billy could see from the window.

That afternoon Billy put out in his leaky old punt to "jig" squid for bait. He was so disgusted with the punt – so ashamed of the squat, weather-worn, rotten cast-off – that he wished heartily for a new one all the way to the grounds. The loss of the Never Give Up had brought him to humiliating depths.

But when he had once joined the little fleet of boats, he cheerfully threw his grapnel into Bobby Lot's punt and beckoned Bobby aboard. Then, as together they drew the writhing-armed, squirting little squids from the water, he told of the "big squids" which lurked in the deep water beyond the harbour; and all the time Bobby opened his eyes wider and 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 had instinctively turned from a reddish-brown to a livid green, the colour of sea-water; indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would have had hard work to see it.

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

"Leave us look at it close," said he. "Then we'll know what a real devil-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 the broad, flap-like tail attached. The head was repulsively ugly – perhaps because of the eyes, which were disproportionately large, brilliant, and, in the live squid, ferocious.

A group of arms – two long, slender, tentacular arms, and eight shorter, 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 and active, and as long as the head, body and tail put together.

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

"Oh, that's his squirter!" Billy explained. "When he wants to back up he points that forward, and squirts out water so hard as he can; and when he wants to go ahead he points it backward, and does the same thing. That's where his ink comes from, too, when he wants to make the water 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 like a rasp."

"I wouldn't like to be cotched by a squid as big as a hogshead," Bobby remarked, 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 to think they was worse than they is – terrible ghostlike things. But they'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 when they're sore wounded and dyin'."

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

"If they was a big squid come up the harbour to your house," said Billy, 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 for your 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, and wanted you, he could get you. But I'm not so sure that he would want you. He couldn't see you, anyhow; and if he could, he'd rather have a good fat salmon."

Bobby shuddered as he looked at the tiny squid in his hand, and thought of 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 like lightning. 'Tis time to get, then!"

"I'm goin' to keep an axe in my punt after this," said Bobby, "and if I sees 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 the book that they was worth a lot to some people. And if I can sell mine I'm goin' to have a new punt."

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

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

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

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