a flame for a few minutes, so that the mottled skin may be peeled off.

But treacherous and murderous Thug of the Sea as he is, the octopus has
one dreaded foe before whom he flees in terror, and compresses his body
into the narrowest and most inaccessible cleft or endeavours to bury
himself in the loose, soft sand--and that foe is the orange-coloured or
sage-green rock eel. Never do you see one of these eels in the open
water; they lie deep under the stones or twine their lithe, slippery
bodies among the waving kelp or seaweed. Always hungry, savage-eyed, and
vicious, they know no fear of any living thing, and seizing an octopus
and biting off tentacle after tentacle with their closely-set,
needle-like teeth and swallowing it whole is a matter of no more moment
to them than the bolting of a tender young mullet or bream. In vain does
the Sea Thug endeavour to enwrap himself round and round the body of one
of these sinuous, scaleless sea-snakes and fasten on to it with his
terrible cupping apparatus of suckers--the eel slips in and out and
"wolfs" and worries his enemy without the slightest harm to itself.
Some of them are large--especially the orange-coloured variety--three or
four feet in length, and often one will raise his snaky head apparently
out of solid rock and regard you steadily for a moment. Then he
disappears. You advance cautiously to the spot and find a hole no larger
than the circumference of an afternoon tea cup, communicating with the
water beneath. Lower a baited hook with a strong wire snooding, and
"Yellowskin" will open wide his jaws and swallow it without your feeling
the slightest movement of the line. But you must be quick and strong of
hand then, or you will never drag him forth, for slippery as he is he
can coil his length around a projecting bit of rock and defy you for
perhaps five or ten minutes; and then when you do succeed in tearing him
away and pull him out with the hook buried deep in his loose, pendulous,
wrinkled and corduroyed throat, he instantly resolves himself into a