Seized by the tentacle and glued to its suckers, the unfortunate man was swinging in the air at the mercy of this enormous appendage.
He gasped, he choked, he yelled:
"Help!
Help!"
These words, pronounced in French, left me deeply stunned!
So I had a fellow countryman on board, perhaps several!
I'll hear his harrowing plea the rest of my life!
The poor fellow was done for.
Who could tear him from such a powerful grip?
Even so, Captain Nemo rushed at the devilfish and with a sweep of the ax hewed one more of its arms.
His chief officer struggled furiously with other monsters crawling up the Nautilus's sides.
The crew battled with flailing axes.
The Canadian, Conseil, and I sank our weapons into these fleshy masses.
An intense, musky odor filled the air.
It was horrible.
For an instant I thought the poor man entwined by the devilfish might be torn loose from its powerful suction.
Seven arms out of eight had been chopped off.
Brandishing its victim like a feather, one lone tentacle was writhing in the air.
But just as Captain Nemo and his chief officer rushed at it, the animal shot off a spout of blackish liquid, secreted by a pouch located in its abdomen.
It blinded us.
When this cloud had dispersed, the squid was gone, and so was my poor fellow countryman!
What rage then drove us against these monsters!
We lost all self–control.
Ten or twelve devilfish had overrun the Nautilus's platform and sides.
We piled helter–skelter into the thick of these sawed–off snakes, which darted over the platform amid waves of blood and sepia ink.
It seemed as if these viscous tentacles grew back like the many heads of Hydra.
At every thrust Ned Land's harpoon would plunge into a squid's sea–green eye and burst it.
But my daring companion was suddenly toppled by the tentacles of a monster he could not avoid.
Oh, my heart nearly exploded with excitement and horror!
The squid's fearsome beak was wide open over Ned Land.
The poor man was about to be cut in half.
I ran to his rescue.
But Captain Nemo got there first.
His ax disappeared between the two enormous mandibles, and the Canadian, miraculously saved, stood and plunged his harpoon all the way into the devilfish's triple heart.
"Tit for tat," Captain Nemo told the Canadian.
"I owed it to myself!"
Ned bowed without answering him.
This struggle had lasted a quarter of an hour.
Defeated, mutilated, battered to death, the monsters finally yielded to us and disappeared beneath the waves.
Red with blood, motionless by the beacon, Captain Nemo stared at the sea that had swallowed one of his companions, and large tears streamed from his eyes.
Chapter 19 The Gulf Stream
THIS DREADFUL SCENE on April 20 none of us will ever be able to forget.
I wrote it up in a state of intense excitement.
Later I reviewed my narrative.
I read it to Conseil and the Canadian.
They found it accurate in detail but deficient in impact.
To convey such sights, it would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo, author of The Toilers of the Sea.
As I said, Captain Nemo wept while staring at the waves.
His grief was immense.
This was the second companion he had lost since we had come aboard.