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Updated: June 25, 2025
There was no further room for sentiment in their present existence; they had to deal with chill necessities. As for the sailor, he was glad that the chance turn of their conversation enabled him to warn her against the lurking dangers of the lagoon. There was no need to mention the devil-fish now; he must spare her all avoidable thrills.
Choate said he was sure it was devouring prey which it had just killed. He now asked Paul if he would like to try a cast. The boy assented eagerly. Bracing his feet in the bottom of the motor-boat he took good aim and let his harpoon fly. Paul had hardly hoped to hit the devil-fish.
It was Iris who told of his wild fight against wind and waves, Iris who showed them where he fought with the devil-fish, Iris who expatiated on the long days of ceaseless toil, his dauntless courage in the face of every difficulty, the way in which he rescued her from the clutch of the savages, the skill of his preparations against the anticipated attack, and the last great achievement of all, when, time after time, he foiled the Dyaks' best-laid plans, and flung them off, crippled and disheartened, during the many phases of the thirty hours' battle.
He remembered also, what he had almost forgotten, that during that walk it had come to him with the sharpness of surprise that the image of the girl who clung to his mind with the tentacles of a devil-fish, was as he had seen her standing under the oak tree while unaware of his presence: older, a more dignified and thoughtful figure, a woman old enough to be his mate in something more than youthful passion, the ideal woman of vague sweet dreams; not as the thoughtless little coquette who had tempted him to ruin his chances by acting like a cave brute.
Upon looking over the side indeed, so clear was the water that we could see vast numbers of monster fish, not only sharks and devil-fish, but saw-fish, jew-fish, sting rays, whip rays, and other specimens of the finny tribe, of great size, swimming below and around us in such numbers that they threatened to upset the canoe, and we actually struck them over and over again with our paddles.
It curved like a serpent and swept deftly within its grasp dozens of the struggling rodents. Other arms appeared waving and seizing on the rats as they swam desperately about. The boys knew that the arms were the tendons of giant devil-fish that had scented from afar the feast of rats. They shuddered as they thought of the fate of human beings who should be cast adrift in such waters.
No, we shall not! We turn too sharp, and do not take a wide-enough sweep. The coach gives a horrible lurch. One side of us is up on the hedge-bank! we are going over! I give a little agonized yell, and make a snatch at Frank, while my fingers clutch his nearest hand with the tenacity of a devil-fish. If it were his hair, or his nose, I should equally grasp it.
For was not the world full of men and women who groaned, not merely under poverty and cruelty, weakness and sickness, but under dullness and stupidity, hugged in the paralyzing arms of that devil-fish, The Commonplace, or held fast to the rocks by the crab Custom, while the tide of moral indifference was fast rising to choke them?
It is pointing toward the northern star, as if to remind one of the all-enduring fixity. Other stars may go round as they will; there is one fixed in its place, and under that star the shadow of despotism hopes to endure forever. While yet in Finland I used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean.
To secure quiet he would frequently visit this isolated place, in spite of the resident devil, the devil-fish, or the devil-strip of treacherous water which ran between.
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