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Hodgson - Deep Sea Creatures — Description

Some deep sea organisms that were brought to the surface along with the titular vessel.

""My word!" he said. "Lord in Heaven! Saw anyone ever the like!"

And I doubt whether any man ever did see what we saw then; for the water was thick and living for yards round the boat with the hugest eels I ever saw before or after.
(...)
"There's the hair, Sir! There's the hair! It's on the reef. There's two! There's three! There's one on the cannon!"
"All right! All right, Duprey! Keep cool," said the Third Mate. "I can see them. You're enough intelligence not to be superstitious now the whole thing's explained. They're some kind of big hairy sea-caterpillar. Prod one with your boat-hook."
I did so; a little ashamed of my sudden bewilderment. The thing whipped round like a tiger, at the boat-hook. It lapped itself round and round the boat-hook, while the hind portions of it kept gripped to the rock, and I could no more pull the boat-hook from its grip, than fly; though I pulled till I sweated.

"Take the point of your cutlass to it, Varley," said the Third Mate. "Jab it through."

The bow-oar did so, and the brute loosed the boat-hook, and curled up round a chunk of rock, looking like a great ball of red hair.
I drew the boat-hook up, and examined it.
"Goodness!" I said. "That's what killed the Old Man—one of those things! Look at all those marks in the wood, where it's gripped it with about a hundred legs."
I passed the boat-hook aft to the Third Mate to look at.
"They're about as dangerous as they can be, Sir, I reckon," I told him.
"Makes you think of African centipedes, only these are big and strong enough to kill an elephant, I should think."

W. H. Hodgson, The Stone Ship