se cuttlefish of the Aquarium,
just as the monstrous oceanic octopi must be that, thousands of yards
down, were illuminating the gloom of the waters with the greenish star
of their phosphorescent nuclei.

From prehistoric times the men of the sea had known this great, ropy
beast of the abysses. The geographers of antiquity used to speak of it,
giving the measurement of its terrible arms.

Pliny used to recount the destruction accomplished by a gigantic
octopus in the vivarium of the Mediterranean. When some sailors
succeeded in killing it they carried it to the epicure, Lucullus,--the
head as big as a barrel, and some of its tentacles so huge that one
person could hardly reach around them. The chroniclers of the Middle
Ages had also spoken of the gigantic cuttlefish that on more than one
occasion had, with its serpentine arms, snatched men from the decks of
the ships.

The Scandinavian navigators, who had never encountered it in their
fjords, nicknamed it the _kraken_, exaggerating its proportions and
even converting it into a fabulous being. If it came to the surface,
they confounded it with an island; if it remained between the two
waters, the captains, on making their soundings, became confused in
their calculations, finding the depth less than that marked on their
charts. In such cases they had to escape before the _kraken_ should
awake and sink the vessel as though it were a fragile skiff among its
whirlpools of foam.

During many long years Science had laughed at the gigantic polypus and
at the sea serpent, another prehistoric animal many times encountered,
supposing them to be merely the inventions of an imaginative sailor,
stories of the forecastle made up to pass the night-watch. Wise men can
only believe what they can study directly and then catalogue in their
museums....

And Ferragut laughed in his turn at poor Science, ignorant and
defenseless before the mysterious immensity of the ocean, and having
scarcely achieved the measurement of its great depth. The apparatus of
the diver could go down but a few meters; their only instrument of
exploration was the metal diving-bell, less important than a spider-web
thread that might try to explore the earth by floating across its
atmosphere.

The great cuttlefish living in the tremendous depths do not deign to
come to the surface in order to become acquainted with mankind.
Sickness and oceanic war are the only agents that from time to time
announce their exi