The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
party in the boat to keep away "for God's sake!" It says much for the
modesty and courage of Mr. Fison that he does not seem to be aware that
there was any quality of heroism in his action at this juncture. The oar
he had abandoned was at once drawn under, and presently reappeared
floating about twenty yards away.
At the same moment Mr. Fison felt the boat under him lurch violently, and
a hoarse scream, a prolonged cry of terror from Hill, the boatman, caused
him to forget the party of excursionists altogether. He turned, and saw
Hill crouching by the forward row-lock, his face convulsed with terror,
and his right arm over the side and drawn tightly down. He gave now a
succession of short, sharp cries, "Oh! oh! oh!--oh!" Mr. Fison believes
that he must have been hacking at the tentacles below the water-line, and
have been grasped by them, but, of course, it is quite impossible to say
now certainly what had happened. The boat was heeling over, so that the
gunwale was within ten inches of the water, and both Ewan and the other
labourer were striking down into the water, with oar and boat-hook, on
either side of Hill's arm. Mr. Fison instinctively placed himself to
counterpoise them.
Then Hill, who was a burly, powerful man, made a strenuous effort, and
rose almost to a standing position. He lifted his arm, indeed, clean out
of the water. Hanging to it was a complicated tangle of brown ropes, and
the eyes of one of the brutes that had hold of him, glaring straight and
resolute, showed momentarily above the surface. The boat heeled more and
more, and the green-brown water came pouring in a cascade over the side.
Then Hill slipped and fell with his ribs across the side, and his arm and
the mass of tentacles about it splashed back into the water. He rolled
over; his boot kicked Mr. Fison's knee as that gentleman rushed forward to
seize him, and in another moment fresh tentacles had whipped about his
waist and neck, and after a brief, convulsive struggle, in which the boat
was nearly capsized, Hill was lugged overboard. The boat righted with a
violent jerk that all but sent Mr. Fison over the other side, and hid the
struggle in the water from his eyes.
He stood staggering to recover his balance for a moment, and as he did so
he became aware that the struggle and the inflowing tide had carried them
close upon the weedy rocks again. Not four yards off a table of rock still
rose in rhythmic movements above the in-wash of the tide. In a moment Mr.
Fison seized the oar from Ewan, gave one vigorous stroke, then dropping
it, ran to the bows and leapt. He felt his feet slide over the rock, and,
by a frantic effort, leapt again towards a further mass. He stumbled over
this, came to his knees, and rose again.
"Look out!" cried someone, and a large drab body struck him. He was
knocked flat into a tidal pool by one of the workmen, and as he went down
he heard smothered, choking cries, that he believed at the time came from
Hill. Then he found himself marvelling at the shrillness and variety of
Hill's voice. Someone jumped over him, and a curving rush of foamy water
poured over him, and passed. He scrambled to his feet dripping, and
without looking seaward, ran as fast as his terror would let him
shoreward. Before him, over the flat space of scattered rocks, stumbled
the two work-men--one a dozen yards in front of the other.
He looked over his shoulder at last, and seeing that he was not pursued,
faced about. He was astonished. From the moment of the rising of the
cephalopods out of the water he had been acting too swiftly to fully
comprehend his actions. Now it seemed to him as if he had suddenly jumped
out of an evil dream.
For there were the sky, cloudless and blazing with the afternoon sun, the
sea weltering under its pitiless brightness, the soft creamy foam of the
breaking water, and the low, long, dark ridges of rock. The righted boat
floated, rising and falling gently on the swell about a dozen yards from
shore. Hill and the monsters, all the stress and tumult of that fierce
fight for life, had vanished as though they had never been.
Mr. Fison's heart was beating violently; he was throbbing to the
finger-tips, and his breath came deep.
There was something missing. For some seconds he could not think clearly
enough what this might be. Sun, sky, sea, rocks--what was it? Then he
remembered the boat-load of excursionists. It had vanished. He wondered
whether he had imagined it. He turned, and saw the two workmen standing
side by side under the projecting masses of the tall pink cliffs. He
hesitated whether he should make one last attempt to save the man Hill.
His physical excitement seemed to desert him suddenly, and leave him
aimless and helpless. He turned shoreward, stumbling and wading towards
his two companions.
He looked back again, and there were now two boats floating, and the one
farthest out at sea pitched clumsily, bottom upward.
III.
So it was _Haploteuthis ferox_ made its appearance upon the
Devonshire coast. So far, this has been its most serious aggression. Mr.
Fison's account, taken together with the wave of boating and bathing
casualties to which I have already alluded, and the absence of fish from
the Cornish coasts that year, points clearly to a shoal of these voracious
deep-sea monsters prowling slowly along the sub-tidal coast-line. Hunger
migration has, I know, been suggested as the force that drove them hither;
but, for my own part, I prefer to believe the alternative theory of
Hemsley. Hemsley holds that a pack or shoal of these creatures may have
become enamoured of human flesh by the accident of a foundered ship
sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of their
accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to our
shores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic. But to discuss Hemsley's
cogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out of place here.
It would seem that the appetites of the shoal were satisfied by the catch
of eleven people--for, so far as can be ascertained, there were ten people
in the second boat, and certainly these creatures gave no further signs of
their presence off Sidmouth that day. The coast between Seaton and
Budleigh Salterton was patrolled all that evening and night by four
Preventive Service boats, the men in which were armed with harpoons and
cutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number of more or less similarly
equipped expeditions, organised by private individuals, joined them. Mr.
Fison took no part in any of these expeditions.
About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of
miles out at sea to the south-east of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seen
waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats at
once hurried towards the alarm. The venturesome occupants of the boat--a
seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys--had actually seen the monsters
passing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most deep-sea
organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathoms
deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of the
water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over,
and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the south-east.
These people told their story in gesticulated fragments, as first one boat
drew alongside and then another. At last there was a little fleet of eight
or nine boats collected together, and from them a tumult, like the chatter
of a market-place, rose into the stillness of the night. There was little
or no disposition to pursue the shoal, the people had neither weapons nor
experience for such a dubious chase, and presently--even with a certain
relief, it may be--the boats turned shoreward.
And now to tell what is perhaps the most astonishing fact in this whole
astonishing raid. We have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequent
movements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now alert
for it. But it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot was stranded
off Sark on June 3. Two weeks and three days after this Sidmouth affair, a
living _Haploteuthis_ came ashore on Calais sands. It was alive,
because several witnesses saw its tentacles moving in a convulsive way.
But it is probable that it was dying. A gentleman named Pouchet obtained a
rifle and shot it.
That was the last appearance of a living _Haploteuthis_. No others
were seen on the French coast. On the 15th of June a dead carcass, almost
complete, was washed ashore near Torquay, and a few days later a boat from
the Marine Biological station, engaged in dredging off Plymouth, picked up
a rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound. How the former
had come by its death it is impossible to say. And on the last day of
June, Mr. Egbert Caine, an artist, bathing near Newlyn, threw up his arms,
shrieked, and was drawn under. A friend bathing with him made no attempt
to save him, but swam at once for the shore. This is the last fact to tell
of this extraordinary raid from the deeper sea. Whether it is really the
last of these horrible creatures it is, as yet, premature to say. But it
is believed, and certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now,
and returned for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out of
which they have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen.
XIV.
THE OBLITERATED MAN.
I was--you shall hear immediately why I am not now--Egbert Craddock
Cummins. The name remains. I am still (Heaven help me!) Dramatic Critic to
the _Fiery Cross_. What I shall be in a little while I do not know. I
write in great trouble and confusion of mind. I will do what I can to make
myself clear in the face of terrible difficulties. You must bear with me a
little. When a man is rapidly losing his own identity, he naturally finds
a difficulty in expressing himself. I will make it perfectly plain in a
minute, when once I get my grip upon the story. Let me see--where
_am_ I? I wish I knew. Ah, I have it! Dead self! Egbert Craddock
Cummins!
In the past I should have disliked writing anything quite so full of "I"
as this story must be. It is full of "I's" before and behind, like the
beast in Revelation--the one with a head like a calf, I am afraid. But my
tastes have changed since I became a Dramatic Critic and studied the
masters--G.A.S., G.B.S., G.R.S., and the others. Everything has changed
since then. At least the story is about myself--so that there is some
excuse for me. And it is really not egotism, because, as I say, since
those days my identity has undergone an entire alteration.
That past!... I was--in those days--rather a nice fellow, rather shy--
taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face "interesting,"
slight stutter which I had caught in my early life from a schoolfellow.
Engaged to a very nice girl, named Delia. Fairly new, she was--
cigarettes--liked me because I was human and original. Considered I was
like Lamb--on the strength of the stutter, I believe. Father, an eminent
authority on postage stamps. She read a great deal in the British Museum.
(A perfect pairing ground for literary people, that British Museum--you
should read George Egerton and Justin Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the
rest of them.) We loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightest
hopes. (All gone now.) And her father liked me because I seemed honestly
eager to hear about stamps. She had no mother. Indeed, I had the happiest
prospects a young man could have. I never went to theatres in those days.
My Aunt Charlotte before she died had told me not to.
Then Barnaby, the editor of the _Fiery Cross_, made me--in spite of
my spasmodic efforts to escape--Dramatic Critic. He is a fine, healthy