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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Nothing." "Gentlemen, be brilliant for my first number. The Baron du Chatelet and his cuttlefish bone will not last for a week, and the writer of Le Solitaire is worn out." "And 'Sosthenes-Demosthenes' is stale too," said Vernou; "everybody has taken it up." "The fact is, we want a new set of ninepins," said Frederic.
Ah! how my heart beat with emotion and horror! The formidable beak of a cuttlefish was open over Ned Land. The unhappy man would be cut in two. I rushed to his succour. But Captain Nemo was before me; his axe disappeared between the two enormous jaws, and, miraculously saved, the Canadian, rising, plunged his harpoon deep into the triple heart of the poulp.
"Is anything wrong, ma'am?" asked Cap'n Bill, seeing a frown gather upon the queen's lovely face. "I hope not," she said. "But I must warn you that these cuttlefish are the servants of the terrible sea devils, and from the way they are acting they seem determined to drive us toward the Devil Caves, which I wished to avoid."
Yet it mattered not; for the wound inflicted by the bo'sun's weapon was so frightful, that the giant cuttlefish released the boat, and slid back into deep water, churning it into foam, and gouting blood.
I went towards the Captain. "A curious collection of poulps?" I said. "Yes, indeed, Mr. Naturalist," he replied; "and we are going to fight them, man to beast." I looked at him. I thought I had not heard aright. "Man to beast?" I repeated. "Yes, sir. The screw is stopped. I think that the horny jaws of one of the cuttlefish is entangled in the blades. That is what prevents our moving."
Great as my curiosity naturally was to know more of these immense organisms, all my inquiries on the subject were fruitless. These veterans of the whale-fishery knew that the sperm whale lived on big cuttlefish; but they neither knew, nor cared to know, anything more about these marvellous molluscs.
Her pupils appeared enlarged, and the whites of her eyes had a wateriness of morbid reflection. Ferragut felt that thus the insane must look in their great crises. She was speaking between her teeth, with emotional pauses, admiring the ferocity of the cuttlefish, grieving that she did not possess their vigor and their cruelty.
So they again started, this time almost at a right angle to their former course, the little girl inquired: "How can the cuttlefish color the water so very black?" "They carry big sacks in front of them where they conceal the ink," Princess Clia answered. "Whenever they choose, the cuttlefish are able to press out this ink, and it colors the water for a great space around them."
"No," the Queen answered after a glance ahead of them, "that is a cuttlefish, and he is dyeing the sea around him with ink so that he can hide from us. Let us turn a little to the left, for we could see nothing at all in that inky water." Following her advice, they made a broad curve to the left, and at once the water began to darken in that direction.
Besides the sepia, however, this coast swarms with another variety of cuttlefish which also furnishes a food-staple the formidable tako, or true octopus. Tako weighing fifteen kwan each, or nearly one hundred and twenty-five pounds, are sometimes caught near the fishing settlement of Nakamura.
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