immense octopus rose into view, and at once made for the terrified
man, who instantly saw his danger, and with great presence of mind
promptly turned and scrambled back into the boat.

The terrible creature was after him, however, and to the horror of
the onlookers it extended its great flexible tentacles, enveloped
the entire boat, man and all, and then dragged the whole down into
the clear depths. The diver's horrified comrades rushed to his
assistance, and an attempt was made to kill the octopus with a
harpoon, but without success. Several of his more resourceful
companions then dived into the water with a big net made of stout
twine, which they took right underneath the octopus, entangling the
creature and its still living prey. The next step was to drag up
both man and octopus into the whale-boat, and this done, the
unfortunate Malay was at length seized by his legs, and dragged by
sheer force out of the frightful embrace, more dead than alive, as
you may suppose. However, we soon revived him by putting him into
a very hot bath, the water being at such a temperature as actually
to blister his skin. It is most remarkable that the man was not
altogether drowned, as he had been held under water by the
tentacles of the octopus for rather more than two minutes. But,
like all the Malays of our party, this man carried a knife, which
he used to very good purpose on the monster's body when first it
dragged him under the water. These repeated stabs caused the
creature to keep rolling about on the surface, and the unhappy man
was in this way enabled to get an occasional breath of air;
otherwise he must infallibly have been drowned. It was a horrible-
looking creature, with a slimy body, and a hideous cavity of a
mouth. It is the tentacles of the creature that are so dreaded, on
account of the immense sucking power which they possess.