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.
After this incident the divers always took a tomahawk with them on their expeditions, in order to lop off the tentacles of any octopus that might try to attack them in the boats.

And, by the way, we saw many extraordinary creatures during our cruise.

I myself had a serious fright one day whilst indulging in a swim.
We had anchored in about five fathoms, and as I was proceeding leisurely away from the vessel at a slow breast stroke, a monstrous fish, fully twenty feet long, with an enormous hairy head and fierce, fantastic moustaches, suddenly reared up out of the water, high into the air.