Evening Star Newspaper, February 23, 1930, Page 89

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 23, 1930.7 S B IS | Truth About the Octopus Victor Berge, a Scandinavian Ead Who Ran Away From Home and Became a South Sea Pearl Fisherman, Spins Here His Story of a Hand-to-Hand Fight With the Terror of the Deep. P4 MONG all the strange undersea creatures I've seen the - octopus holds first place. “Speaking as a diver—not as a . Seaman, or & whaler, or anything else—fhis is the most formidable monster of our working world. It is, without sensational- ism, the Terror of the Deep. “First of all, it- has eight long arm-feet, ecoming off from around a hideous mouth, and these eight arms are just like eight boa con- strictors all going at the same time, for their swift, flexible movements are precisely those of an active snake. When he stands up to the height of a man and oozes or darts forward, backward, sideways, any ways, these eight sinu- ous arms are all going at the same time; when he climbs swiftly up over-a cliff like a spider, or creeps under an overhanging reef, every part of these cight arms is continually doing some- thing. “He is horribly, frighteningly “alive. And then suddenly he’ll stop—and be as herribly dead, turn to any color to match his back- ground, no matter what, mimic the shapes about him, lying in wait for his prey. “Under water one becomes accustomed to all sorts of startling color changes, but there’s no animal in all the world who can equal the octopus in imitating anything. The fishes are amateurs beside him; he’ll imitate pink, red, , blue coral—I've seen him break out by a sailor. Berge, who sailed in Hellships, stowed away, and drifted all over the Indian and South Pacific Oceans, finally became a pearl diver, and it was while hunting peari oysters on the ocean floor that he encountered the octopus at home and fought him in his own Bquirt out a cloud of this blue-black liquid faying his smoke screen for yards about, while he darts in among the rocks and creeps out for an unexpected assault. . like ropes with cavern. Both hatch out, the tly a couple of straight’ to the surface, lie along the beach; to enjoy sunning themselves, When, three or four months old they begin monster. experience, day after my answer had always from northeast .. That is in my most Godforsaken meat and tortolse shell to rovers of eastern ®oas. “As is customary with every pearlér, T was “I could see a sort of shapeless mass, and wavering, squirmy arms, and I knew that this was the thing I had laughed at. The instant ‘my hand would stretch down with the knife he'd give a terrific jerk, dragging me 10 or 15 feet.” watching the sea floor. I noticed a number of patches here and there; they began to interest me. “ ‘Gee!’ said I, ‘it looks like shell here.’ “We grew excited; finding & new and virgin pear]l bed is an adventure that never fails to get a pearler keyed up. & “‘Il go down and have a look-see,’ I told uG!.'rrmo into the suit, T started to explore thoroughly, gliding up and down over these patches, drifting along behind the lugger, straining my eyes for the first glimpse of the big pearl oysters, “The water was fairly deep, about 20 fath- oms, 120 feet. To one side me there was an open space between masses coral; I fancied T could distinguish something lying down there suspiciously ‘like real shell. So I worked my i Pearl Diver Victor Berge. nzuammmmwmm well. a mass of soft flesh, two more arms laid hold of me, one around each ankle. I felt a vicious jerk at my legs which almost upset me. sounds melodramatic when one re- Yet no description could paint the that moment. It was rather murky, poohed, T had a swift picture dangling life line and air hose; of & human being that was myself, gripped close to the maw of this loathsome monster. “MlAlWHn.l. I was fighting automatically. Each time I would bend to cut my ankles free the creature would jerk me so violently that I seemed to be a littie boy pulled about by a strong man; it was with the greatest difficulty that I kept my footing. The helmet to free myself; the other, was carefully weighing chances, attempting to decide whether I dared give the danger signal. “That’s the last thing a diver resorts to in an emergency—four pulls, meaning, ‘Pull until the line breaks.’ The emergency was there all right; but I feared my air pipe and life line might have become tangled.in some of these coral projections all about. Should they be . $¢ A LL this time our strange duel was con- tinuing. I was using all my strength to resist the creature's pulls, while striving to éut more of these living fetters which bound me. All this in a pool now blackened and turbid with the ink the beast squirted out. After time it was an eternity to me—there was noth- ing before or after this nightmare struggle. I began to realize I could not last much longer. the wave of fear-frightened unconsciousness swept over me, I threw up my arms, caught both lines, gave four frantic pulls. There was an instant when I had the sensationi of being pulled in two lengthways. Then I knew nothing. , - “I shot suddenly up to within 10 or 15 feet of the surface. I do not know why, but it was at this moment'I regained comsciousness' with quite strange. It must be that if a dead man could come back to life he would feel as I did then.” . (Coprright, 1930.) Poor Pay for Farm Labor. Tfl'mw"mmumm private in the Army last year, in addi-