The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-12-14
SEIZED BY AN OCTOPUS.
Friehtful Experience of a Man Off
the New Guinea Coast.
rom the World Wide AIarazjno.

J. FOlIl lH' W bIlN w lNt Alil|iEll'.
The greatest enemy the divers had to
fear in the waters Of New Guinea was
the dreaded octopus, whose presence
OccasiOned far greater panic than the
appearance Of mere shark. These
loathHDmp monsters would sometimes
come and throw their horrible tentacies
over the side Of the frail craft from
which the divers We're working, and
actually fasten one of the men them
selves, dragging them out into the
water At other times OctopuSes have
been known to attack the divers down
below. and hold them relentlessly un-
der water until life was extinct One
of our own men had terribly narrow
escape from one of these fearful Crea-
lures. | must explain, however, that
each evening when the divers returned
from pearl fishing they roped all their
little skiffs together and let them lie
astern Of the schooner Well, one night
the wind rose and rain fell heavily.
with The result that next morning all
the little boats were found more or less
waterlOggcd. Some of the MalayN were
told off to so and bale them out While
they were at work one of the men
saw a notwithstanding black object
in the sea. which so attracted his cur
iositY that he diyed overheard to find
out what it was. He had barely reach
ed the water. however, when an i'm
mense UctOpus rose into view. and Mt
once made FOR the terrified man, who
instantly saw his danger and with
great presence of mind turned and
scrambled back into the boat
The terrible creature was after him.
however, ana, to the horror of the on
lockers, it extended it's great flexible
tentacles, enveloprd the entire boat
man and all, ana then dragged the
whole down under the crystal sea. The
divers Mortified comrades rushed to
his assistance, and an attempt was
made to Kill the octopus with har-
poOn, but without success. Several of
his more reSOur,efu COmDanions then
diVed into the water, with a big net
made Of rope, which they took right
underneath the octopus. entanglng
the creature and its still living prey
The next step was To drag up both
man ana octopus into the WhalebOat
ana, this done, the unfortunate Malay
was al length seized by his legs and
, dragged by sheer force out of the
frlshtGu "mbrao, more dead than
alive. However. we soon reNiN him
by putting him i'm a hot bath the water
being at such "A temperature as actu-
ally to blister his skin 1t is most re-
markable that the man was not alto
gether drowned, as he had been held
under water by the tentaclps of the
octopus for rather more than two min
uteS But, like all the MalayS of our
party, this man carried knife which
he used to very good purpose on the
monsters body when first il dragged
him under the water. These repeated
Stabs caused the creature to keep roll
ing about on the surface. The un-
happy man was in this way enabled to
get an occasional breath of air. other
wise he must infallibly have been
drowned. The octopus had an oval
body, and was provided with an extra
ordinary number of tentaCles-SiX very
large ones and many smaller ones of
varying sizes. 1t was horrible look
ing creature with fiat. slimy body.
yellowish- white in color, with black
spots and a hideous cavity of a mouth
without teeth. II is the tentacles of
| the creature that are SO dreaded, on
account of the immense sucking power
which they possess. After this incident
the divers always took a tomahawk
with them on their expeditions, in or
| der TO lop off the tcntaCles of any oc-
topus that might try to attack them.