 Chapter 33 of Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Grimson B. Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes by Mrs. A. S. Hardy. More about the squids. More about the squids. Down to the pier we went. There we found squids that were yet live and in full possession of all their faculties, lying imprisoned in the deep tide pools. No better opportunity could have been given us for our study. And we were not long in seeing that our fisherman friend had called their changing color. We selected two fine specimens nearly a foot long that lay near together and sat down upon the sand to watch their every movement. One squid was of a bright red color when we found it. The other was a beautiful blue. In a few seconds the little girl who wondered, exclaimed, They are playing tricks on us. The red one is growing blue and the blue one is green. Now there are waves of yellow running over them both. True it was. We saw pink and blue and brown and orange flash with a great rapidity through the tissues covering the bodies of these wonderful creatures. We examined the dead squids that lay nearby and found that small dark spots were to be seen covering the surfaces of their bodies. We walked out on the pier and looked for other squids in the water below us. For some time none were to be seen. But we remembered our fisherman friend had told us, There will be times when you can't see one through. There will be dozens under your very eyes. We were almost ready to give up and go back to our prisoners on the tide pools when along came a school of bass leaping, flashing and playing as if they were just out of school and up darted dozens of shining squids and caught a breakfast in their long sucker like arms. For the unsuspecting school of bass had seen the squids no more than we. The experience made us wiser and we watched the wily squids sink back to the sea bottom assuming so perfectly the color of the sand and wrack as again to be unnoticed. As we became better acquainted with our squid friends we learned that they were able quickly to assume the color of surrounding objects. This is for their protection as well as to assist them in securing their prey. The dark spots we had discovered upon the bodies of dead squids showed us where they little color cells covering the surface of the animals body. These cells appear to run together and upon opening and closing rapidly at the will of the squid they send the color fluids over the strange creatures in rapid flashes making them really the chameleons of the sea. Besides this power which they have of making themselves inconspicuous they have still another means of protection and escape from enemies. This is an ink bag which every squid carries. If too hotly pursued it forces ink from this sack into the sea and the surrounding water at once becomes so clouded that the squid unseen is able to make its escape. Watching the squids darting through the water so rapidly we do not wonder they are sometimes called sea arrows and flying squids. Will you believe me when I tell you that the squids are near relatives of Prince Facularia and of Captain Fulgar who lived in his houseboat or of the bivalves, those sea people who live in houses with double doors? This is really true. We must remember that the shell in which the animal lives is its house and not the animal itself no matter how closely they may be joined together. We find the bodies of Prince Facularia, of Captain Fulgar and of the bivalve families are really made on much the same plan as the bodies of the squids. They each have their all important mantle. In the cavity of the mantle of each are heart and gills and nerves and digestive organs acting very much alike in all of them. Wise people who think they have become very well acquainted with them all tell us that the squids have finer organisms and are much smarter sea folk than are their cousins of whom I have told you. They tell us too that the brains of these smart squids are in a ring around their gullets. It seems to be the opinion of squids that they need no outside shell for protection but they do need an inside shell or backbone for support. So their shell is within and is a long slender rod. It is shaped something like a quill or feather and is called a pen. The mantle cavity in the squid is really a bag formed of the mantle and having its opening only at the end next to the animal's head. In this bag we find a large tube or siphon which carries water to the gills and through which the water is forced from the cavity in such a way and with such power as to shoot the animal backward with great rapidity. The squid has also two fins that help it in swimming. Its head appears to be split up into ten arms. This gives it another name which is long and hard but which means head footed or arms around the head. Eight of these arms are short and thick and covered on the inner side with rows of suckers. The two remaining arms are long and slender accepting near the ends where they enlarge and are oval and club shaped and are also covered with sucking discs. These arms with all their suckers are powerful weapons from which there is no chance of escape for the little sea traveler once within their grasp. Especially terrible is the giant squid whose arms are often thirty feet long reaching out on every side and armed with hundreds of these powerful suckers. Notwithstanding the weapons our common squints carry and the tricks they play they still form a large part of the food of fishes, jellyfishes, whales and seabirds. Even the great and dangerous giant squid fears the sperm whale and in their battles the sperm whale is always the victor. Tell us sea squids little wonders what you do and what you think can't you ride us all about it ride it with your pen and ink then the squids the little wonders sent in gurgles through the brine we have written scores of letters and you cannot read a line send the squids the little wonders we had cousins long ago who have left on stony tablets things that you would like to know End of Chapter 33 more about the squids Recording by Grimson B Chapter 34 of Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes by Mrs. A. S. Hardy Chapter 34 An Ugly Relative Our squid has other relatives beside such sea people as living houses with their double doors or the steeple householders. One of these relatives is so ugly and so dangerous as to be called devil fish by the semen. Its real name is octopus. Its body is rounded in shape while the body of the squid is long. Like the squid it has two large and highly developed eyes sleepless, alert and cruel. Its formidable mouth at the top of its rounded body is armed with two teeth that look somewhat like the beak of a parrot. This mouth is surrounded by eight serpent-like arms bearing their rows of terrible suckers. When these cruel arms one sees upon their prey there is no release for it unless the arm with its clinging suckers can be severed from the body to which it belongs. The prey is torn to pieces by the parrot-like beak upon the tongue of the animal and quickly swallowed. We are told that a dozen men are barely a match in strength for a full-grown octopus and that fierce is the battle when a boat's crew attempt the capture of one. The cuddle bone of commerce is the internal shell or the backbone of the kind of octopus known as a cuttlefish. This bone is much larger than the quill-like pin of the squid. It is taken from the ink sack of the octopus is saved for the market and becomes the sepia which artists who work in watercolors use. With the frightful picture before us of a devilfish, ugly, pitiless and savage, we are almost surprised that anything good can be said of the creature, but a mother octopus shows a devotion to her eggs and to her young equal to that shown by gentle creatures of a harmless life. Not all, for she builds a nest for them requiring not a little labor. Those who have been able to study the life of the creature in its native haunts tell us of its habit of hiding in holes among the rocks and there like a giant spider watching for the unwary whom it may seize and devour. In a hiding place like this, a mother octopus has been known to make her nest, bringing together shells and stones for its construction. Thousands and thousands of eggs, tiny almost as a grain of sand, are laid in this nest. There, for weeks, she watches over them, fondling them at times with a sort of affection and guarding them with a dragon-like fierceness. End of Chapter 34 Recording by Becky Butler Chapter 35 of Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes This is a LibriVox recording, while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes by Mrs. A. S. Hardy Wrecked is the Ship of Pearl. We are glad to turn from the ugly octopus to two other members of this family of whom we can tell more pleasant stories. These two live and sail in painted boats, as fine as any which their cousin, Captain Fulger, can command. One of these is the Nautilus, and the other is the female Argonaut. Both little animals have the fleshy tomb, or siphon, which is characteristic of the family and by means of which these little sailors propel their house boats backward through the water. The little miss was lucky enough, as the old fisherman had said, to find not one of the mids' aristocratic relations, but the ferry boat in which it had made its life, voyage. The little mariner was gone, and Wrecked was the Ship of Pearl. The shell, which the little miss found, was one which had been the beautiful home of a Nautilus. These shells have several chambers, only one of which is occupied at a time. As the little inmate outgrows one pearl-lined hull, it withdraws from it, seals it up, and leaves it forever, the living room of the Nautilus always being the last built outer room. Dr. Holmes has told the story of the chambered Nautilus in a beautiful poem, and brings us sweet lessons from the frail tenet of that Ship of Pearl. The female Argonaut, or the paper sailor, is like a little fairy princess of the sea. Her house is in deep water, far from jagged rocks, for her bark is too fragile to be beaten by angry waves against a rock-bound coast. She loves warm seas best, and sometimes, through the clear water, she is seen walking on the sea floor, bearing her shell upon her back after the fashion of her fulgur cousin, or the gay prince Fasiolaria. Still, this little sea fairy, who sails so fearlessly through stormy tides, far out to sea, is not fastened to her house, as they are fastened to theirs, but is only held in her place by the broad ends of two of her arms, sometimes called sails. These arms seem to embrace the little boat in which the fairy rides. The delicate crumpled shell of this Argonaut sailor is not chambered and seems to have been made, secreted, we say, by the little fairy, only as a safe and beautiful home for her eggs. So this little Argonaut mother does her utmost that her children may sail safely on life's unresting sea. He who creates the planets and leads them on through space cares for these tiny builders and gives them skill and grace. How much he cares for beauty reveals each tinted shell. How much for perfect building these pearly chambers tell. End of Chapter 35 of Sea Stories for Wonder Eyes by Mrs. A. S. Hardy.