was more like an island than an animal. It is also recounted that the Bishop of Nidros one day built an altar upon an enormous rock. Mass concluded, the rock got up and departed to the sea. The rock was a cuttle!”
“Is that all?” said Ned.
“No; another bishop, Pontoppidan de Berghem, also speaks of a cuttle upon which he could exercise a regiment of cavalry!”
“They said something besides their prayers, did those bishops,” replied Ned.
“Finally, the ancient naturalists quote monsters whose throats were like gulfs, and which were too large to get through the Straits of Gibraltar.”
“Oh! go ahead!” said the Canadian.
“But now, what is the truth of all this?” asked Conseil.
“Nothing, my friends—nothing at least but which passes the limits of truth and reaches legend or fable. Still, there is at any rate some ground or pretext for this play of the imagination of story-tellers. One cannot deny that cuttles and calmars of great size do exist, but they are not so large as cetacea. Aristotle mentioned a calmar of five cubits, nearly ten yards in length. Fishermen have often met with them more than four feet long. The museums of Trieste and Montpellier have skeletons of poulpes measuring two yards. Besides, according to the calculation of naturalists, one of these animals, measuring six feet only, has tentacles twenty-seven feet in length. That would be a formidable monster!”
“Do they fish for them at present?” asked Ned Land.
“If they do not fish for them, sailors see them. One of my friends, Captain Paul Bos, of Havre, has often told me that he met an enormous cuttle in the Indian seas. But the most astonishing incident, and one that will not allow us
