Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — BATTLE WITH AN OCTOPUS. [ARTICLE]

BATTLE WITH AN OCTOPUS.

Five Fisherman Have a Terribis Experience. A huge octopus was hoisted on Fisherman’s Wharf on Thursday afternoon from Capt. Charles Collins' boat, and the four members of the crew shuddered as they handled it and told of their terrible fight far out from the land. The monster covered a large section of the wharf, and its long tentacles were avoided by the curious crowd with dread. Several of the fish are caught each week and brought to the dock by the curious boats of the fishermen, but never had so large a one been carried in through the Heads as the one caught by Captain Collins and his crew. The long tentacles when spread apart measured about twenty-five feet from tip to tip, and they were armed all the way along with dreadful saucer-like mouths that sucked the life from their victims.

“It was a fearful fight that we had with the monster,” said Captain Collins, in his broken Greek, “and ifc is only by a miracle that I am hero to tell of it. Wednesday morning we commenced to take up our linen as usual. There came a violent tug ut the line, and a huge arm of the monster flashed out of the water and landed acrotia the gunwale of the boat. In an instant it. fastened its tenacious suckers, while the water about tho boat was lashed into a foam. An octopus can be killed almost instantly if it can be stabbed just below the eye, oven if the weapon be only the small blade of a pocket knife, and when the fellow rose so close to me and presented such a good opportunity for the death blow, I reached for the boat-hook and made a lunge for the vital spot. As I did so the boat careened violently, and instead of dispatching the brute only inflicted' a wound that maddened the monster the more. The battle then became■ one of life or death between us. A couple more of the arms of the octopus had by this time been wound, around the boat and they reached from stem to stern. The boat waa completely enveloped by them, and all hands were kept busy- to escape being caught in the clutches of the relentless suckers. The small craft rolled and rocked in the arms of the monster, and every moment it threatened to throw all five of us into tho - water. Blows had no effect on tho huge tentacles. The men belabored what parts of the fish they could 1 reach with clubs, but the effect waa. like pounding a piece of rubber. “One of the stout fishhooks had caught securely in the body of tho brute and a couple of the men began, to haul in on the stout line. Steadily the men hauled away until the body was dragged upwatd and as it reached the surface the sharp spike of tho boat hook was driven with a hand of desperatjon deep into the brute's body just below the eye and the victory was won.”—[San Francisco. Ex-r aminer.