Page 12 - Three Adventures

Voyage of the Pomeranian

and I determined to ask him about these phenomena when I next
saw him at our club in Mayfair. All such thoughts were banished,
however, when the octopus came to a halt in front of me and began a
startling display of color changes.

At first I feared the animal to be in the throes of disease, perhaps
poisoning by Oleg Lamb. Then I realized he was flashing portions of
his mantle and arms in an extremely rapid but regular pattern, from
red to white to purplish brown. It has been proposed in the literature
that these largely defenseless creatures compensate for their
vulnerability by evasive means, among them their ability to create an
underwater smokescreen of ink and to insinuate themselves into
narrow apertures in the rocks through which their blunter predators
cannot pass. They also possess the chameleon skill of self-
camouflage, instantly assuming the coloration of their immediate
environment to achieve near-invisibility. And here was Tristan,
expressing some inner urge by doing just the opposite with his
chromatophoric cells: attracting attention. I stood, fascinated, for
several minutes, while he continued the spectacle. It occurred to me
that the closest analogue might be mockingbird song, a string of
memorized sounds reproduced loudly to establish territorial
boundaries. That remains to be determined.

Tristan ceased his fireworks, finally, and seemed to be waiting for me
to respond. I was at a loss, unable to do anything but open my palms
in a quite-human gesture of helplessness. The octopus stared up at
me for a moment, then suddenly extended one arm up through the
water and wrapped it around my left wrist, leaving the tip hovering
above my palm. I almost panicked, all those horrible images of the
kraken racing past my mind’s eye. But Tristan, having gotten a grip
on me, exerted no other force. He was not going to pull me down to
a watery, if shallow, grave. I remained rooted to the spot, hoping to
learn the meaning of this strange behavior. I did not have long to
wait.

The octopus then did something unbelievable. With another arm he
tapped himself on the mantle, then tapped my left palm in a peculiar
fashion with the tip of the arm by which he grasped me. Then he

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