III.
So it was _Haploteuthis ferox_ made its appearance upon theDevonshire coast. So far, this has been its most serious aggression. Mr.Fison's account, taken together with the wave of boating and bathingcasualties to which I have already alluded, and the absence of fish fromthe Cornish coasts that year, points clearly to a shoal of these voraciousdeep-sea monsters prowling slowly along the sub-tidal coast-line. Hungermigration has, I know, been suggested as the force that drove them hither;but, for my own part, I prefer to believe the alternative theory ofHemsley. Hemsley holds that a pack or shoal of these creatures may havebecome enamoured of human flesh by the accident of a foundered shipsinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of theiraccustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to ourshores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic. But to discuss Hemsley'scogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out of place here.
It would seem that the appetites of the shoal were satisfied by the catchof eleven people--for, so far as can be ascertained, there were ten peoplein the second boat, and certainly these creatures gave no further signs oftheir presence off Sidmouth that day. The coast between Seaton andBudleigh Salterton was patrolled all that evening and night by fourPreventive Service boats, the men in which were armed with harpoons andcutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number of more or less similarlyequipped expeditions, organised by private individuals, joined them. Mr.Fison took no part in any of these expeditions.
About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple ofmiles out at sea to the south-east of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seenwaving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats atonce hurried towards the alarm. The venturesome occupants of the boat--aseaman, a curate, and two schoolboys--had actually seen the monsterspassing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most deep-seaorganisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathomsdeep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of thewater, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over,and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the south-east.
These people told their story in gesticulated fragments, as first one boatdrew alongside and then another. At last there was a little fleet of eightor nine boats collected together, and from them a tumult, like the chatterof a market-place, rose into the stillness of the night. There was littleor no disposition to pursue the shoal, the people had neither weapons norexperience for such a dubious chase, and presently--even with a certainrelief, it may be--the boats turned shoreward.
And now to tell what is perhaps the most astonishing fact in this wholeastonishing raid. We have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequentmovements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now alertfor it. But it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot was strandedoff Sark on June 3. Two weeks and three days after this Sidmouth affair, aliving _Haploteuthis_ came ashore on Calais sands. It was alive,because several witnesses saw its tentacles moving in a convulsive way.But it is probable that it was dying. A gentleman named Pouchet obtained arifle and shot it.
That was the last appearance of a living _Haploteuthis_. No otherswere seen on the French coast. On the 15th of June a dead carcass, almostcomplete, was washed ashore near Torquay, and a few days later a boat fromthe Marine Biological station, engaged in dredging off Plymouth, picked upa rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound. How the formerhad come by its death it is impossible to say. And on the last day ofJune, Mr. Egbert Caine, an artist, bathing near Newlyn, threw up his arms,shrieked, and was drawn under. A friend bathing with him made no attemptto save him, but swam at once for the shore. This is the last fact to tellof this extraordinary raid from the deeper sea. Whether it is really thelast of these horrible creatures it is, as yet, premature to say. But itis believed, and certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now,and returned for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out ofwhich they have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen.