Four of the long arms had been severed at the ends when suddenly the octopus came out of his den to fight for his life.  He was a reddish-purple globe of horrid flesh, horned all over, with a head not unlike an elephant’s, but with large, demoniacal eyes, bitter, hating eyes that roved from one to another of us as if selecting his prey.  Eight arms, some shorn of their suckers, stretched out ten feet toward us.

The Marquesans retreated precipitately, and I led them, laughing nervously, but not joyously.  The son of Ugh! stopped first.

“Ta!  Ta!  Ta!  Ta!” he cried.  “Are we afraid of that ugly beast?  I have killed many. Pakeka! We will eat him, too!”

He turned with the others and advanced toward the feke, shouting scornful names at him, threatening him with death and being eaten, warning him that the sooner he gave up, the quicker ended his agony.  But the devilfish was not afraid.  His courage shamed mine.  I was behind the barrier of the boatsmen, but once in the throes of the fight a slimy arm passed between two of them and wound itself around my leg.  I screamed out, for it was icy cold and sent a sickening weakness all through me, so that I could not have swum a dozen feet with it upon me.  One of the natives cut it off, and still it clung to my bloodless skin until I plucked it away.

The son of Ugh! had two of the great arms about him at one time, but his companions hacked at them until he was free.  Then, regardless of the struggles of the maimed devil, they closed in on him and stabbed his head and body until he died.  During these last moments I was amazed and sickened to hear the octopus growling and moaning in its fury and suffering.  His voice had a curious timbre.  I once heard a man dying of hydrophobia make such sounds, half animal, half human.

“That feke would have killed and eaten any one of us,” said the son of Ugh!  “Not many are so big as he, but here in Hana Hevane, where seldom any one fished, they are the biggest in the world.  They lie in these holes in the rocks and catch fish and crabs as they swim by.  My cousin was taken by one while fishing, and was dragged down into the hidden caverns.  He was last seen standing on a ledge, and the next day his bones were found picked clean.  A shark is easier to fight than such a devil who has so many arms.”

The boatsmen gathered up the remnants of the foe and brought them to the beach, where the elder Ugh! was tending the fire.  Crabs were broiling upon it, and the pieces of the feke were flung beside them and the smaller octopi.

When they were cooked, a trough of popoi and one of feikai, or roasted breadfruit mixed with a cocoanut-milk sauce, were placed on the sand, and all squatted to dine.  For a quarter of an hour the only sounds were the plup of fingers withdrawn from mouths filled with popoi, and the faint creaming of waves on the beach.  Marquesans feel that eating is serious business.  The devil-fish and crabs were the delicacies, and served as dessert.  Blackened by the fire, squid and crustacean were eaten without condiment, the tentacles being devoured as one eats celery.  I was soon satisfied, and while they lingered over their food and smoked I strolled up the valley a little way, still feeling the pressure of that severed arm.