contain.

Jan turned to leave the cabin. But in the doorway he started back with a
shudder of dread and loathing. A slender, twisting thing, whitish in
colour and minutely speckled with livid spots, reached in, and fastened
upon his arm with soft-looking suckers which held like death.

Jan knew instantly what the pale, writhing thing was. Out flashed his
knife. With a swift stroke he slashed off the detaining tip, where it
had a thickness of perhaps two inches. The raw stump shrank back, like a
severed worm, and Jan, leaping clear of the doorway, signalled furiously
to be hauled up. But at the same instant two more of the curling white
things came reaching over the bulwarks and fastened upon him--one upon
his right arm, hampering him so that he was almost helpless, and the
other upon his left leg just above the knee. He felt his signal promptly
answered by a powerful tug on the rope. But he was anchored to the wreck
as if he had grown to it.

Never before had Jan Laurvik felt the clutch of fear at his heart as he
did at this moment. But not for an instant, in the horror, did he lose
his presence of mind. He knew that in a pulling match with the giant
devil-fish of the deeps his comrades in the boat far overhead would be
nowhere. He had made a mistake in leaving the cabin. Frantically he
signalled with his left hand, to "slack away" on the rope; and at the
same time, though hampered by the grip on his right arm, he managed to
slash off the end of the feeler that had fixed upon his leg. On the
instant, whipping the knife over to his left, he cut his right arm
clear, and sprang back into the doorway.

Jan's idea was that by keeping just inside the cabin door he could
defend himself from being surrounded by the assault of the writhing
things. He knew that in the open he would speedily be enfolded and
crushed, and engulfed between the jaws of the monstrous squid. But in
the narrow doorway the swift play of his blade would have some chance.
He gained the doorway. He got fairly inside it, indeed. But as he
entered he was horrified to see the thick stump, whose tip he had shorn
off, dart in with him and fix itself, by its bigger and more
irresistible suckers, upon the middle of his breast. With a shiver he
sliced off the fatal disks, in one long sweep of his blade; then turned
like a flash to sever a pallid tip which had fastened upon his helmet.

Jan was now thankful enough that he had got himself into the narrow
doorway.