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There the thundering rascal lay in the middle of that there mangerie of sea-stuff, as Mother Precious is so proud of, that the village calleth it the 'Widow's Weeds. Blest if he didn't think that he were a-lying at the bottom of the sea, among the stars and cuttles, waiting for the day of judgment!
The Octopus is big enough and ugly enough to make one shudder to see him, but the real ogre of the deep is the Giant Cuttle-fish, beside which the Octopus is a tiny mite. These Giant Cuttles have ten arms, two of them being very long. The Octopus's body is round, like that of a fat spider, while the Cuttle has a long body.
Lurking in the dark depths of the sea, these Giant Cuttles wait for large fish, Crabs, or even their own relations, to come near. Like hideous, gigantic Spiders, they are the terror of the ocean caverns. They are so large that they have few enemies to fear.
The Papist threatened us with Purgatory, and fleeched us with pardons the Protestant mints at us with his sword, and cuttles us with the liberty of conscience; but never a one of either says, 'Peter, there is your penny. I am well tired of all this, and for no man shall the bridge fall that pays me not ready money; and I would have you know I care as little for Geneva as for Rome as little for homilies as for pardons; and the silver pennies are the only passports I will hear of."
"I've heard tell," she said, "of great cuttles that sit and squat under the water; and sometimes, when they are hungry, they fling up their suckers and pull you down off the rocks and eat you." Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted. "Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they go "
How extraordinary, strange, and incomprehensible are the creatures captured out of the depths of the sea! The distorted fishes; the ghastly cuttles; the hideous eel-like shapes; the crawling shell-encrusted things; the centipede-like beings; monstrous forms, to see which gives a shock to the brain. They shock the mind because they exhibit an absence of design. There is no idea in them.
Indeed, it is surprising that any animal dares to attack such a monster, but that other giant, the Sperm Whale, dives deep to the home of the Cuttles, purposely to attack and eat them. The Sperm Whale must attack these big creatures in order to get enough food. He has such a huge, barn-like body to fill, that only these big Cuttles will satisfy him.
These cuttles are the only invertebrates at all in the running so far as colossal size is concerned, and it will be observed that here the largest modern specimen immeasurably beats the largest fossil form of the same type.
At what date the gigantic cuttles of the present day first began to make their appearance it would be hard to say, for their shell-less bodies are so soft that they could leave hardly anything behind in a fossil state; but the largest known cuttle, measured by Mr. Gabriel, of Newfoundland, was eighty feet in length, including the long arms.
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