He was in the water up to his belt; his naked feet clutching the slippery roundness of the huge stones at the bottom; his right arm bound and rendered powerless by the flat coils of the long tentacles of the creature, and his body almost hidden under the folds and cross folds of this horrible bandage.
Of the eight arms of the devil-fish three adhered to the rock, while five encircled Gilliatt. In this way, clinging to the granite on the one hand, and with the other to its human prey, it enchained him to the rock. Two hundred and fifty suckers were upon him, tormenting him with agony and loathing. He was grasped by gigantic hands, the fingers of which were each nearly a yard long, and furnished inside with living blisters eating into the flesh.
It is impossible to tear one’s self from the folds of the devil-fish. The attempt ends only in a firmer grasp. The monster clings with more determined force. Its effort increases with that of its victim; every struggle produces a tightening of its ligatures.
Gilliatt had but one resource, his knife.
His left hand only was free; but the reader knows with what power he could use it. It might have been said that he had two right hands.
The antennæ of the devil-fish cannot be cut; it is a leathery substance impossible to divide with the knife, it slips under the edge; its position in attack also is such that to cut it would be to wound the victim’s own flesh.
The creature is formidable, but there is a way of resisting it. The fishermen of Sark know this, as does any one who has seen them execute certain abrupt movements in the sea. The porpoises know it also; they have a way of biting the cuttle-fish which decapitates it. Hence the frequent sight on the sea of pen-fish, poulps, and cuttle-fish without heads.
The devil-fish, in fact, is only vulnerable through the head.
With the devil-fish, as with a furious bull, there is a certain moment in the conflict which must be seized. It is the instant when the devil-fish advances its head. The movement is rapid. He who loses that moment is destroyed.
The things we have described occupied only a few moments. Gilliatt, however, felt the increasing power of its innumerable suckers.
The monster is cunning; it tries first to stupefy its prey. It seizes and then pauses a while.