Page 5 - Three Adventures

Voyage of the Pomeranian

consulting Chinese chefs in Limehouse—yes, there is no better
school of cephalopod anatomy in Albion.

My sleep has been uneasy and fitful of late. I waken frequently,
bathed in sweat—whether it be from fever, the hot humid nights or
the fantastic nightmares I suffer repeatedly. As a result I now
understand quite profoundly how earlier generations confused the
giant squid with sea serpents and other monsters from the deep:
sinuous subsurface movement, seen perhaps at a distance in bad
light, stimulates the imagination into flights of fanciful horror,
tapping the wellsprings of fear to be found in our own subconscious
depths.

Dark images from the realm of fiction persist in haunting me, despite
their dismissal by my rational mind. Melville painted the kraken as “a
vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream
color, innumerable long arms radiating from its center, and curling
and twisting like a nest of anacondas.” And Lord Tennyson, less
garishly but with no less menace implied, wrote,

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides…

May 6, 1884. Lat. 8º 11’ S. Long. 14º 17’ W.

Today I returned to examine the pair of cephalopods in the tank
reserved thus far in vain for one of their much larger cousins. These
hapless creatures are specimens of octopus vulgaris, measuring about
twenty-five pounds and a fully extended arm span near fifteen feet.
Upon sensing my presence as I bent over the side of the tank they
immediately attempted to find refuge where none existed, a pitiable
sight as one of them was clearly injured and unable to locomote
effectively by the usual means of sucking water into its mantle and
expelling it backward through its funnel. Instead it feebly dragged
itself along on its suckers after its more active companion.

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