As illustrating the size of these suckers, I may as well confess to a blunder I once made. It was an extremely low tide, and I was far out on the rocks at Esquimalt Harbour, hunting the pools, when I saw what I fancied a huge actinia, as big as an eggcup, its tentacles hauled in, and, having detached its disc from the rocks, was waiting for the tide: placing the fancied prize safely in my collecting-box, to my disgust, on examining my new species, it turned out to be only the sucking-disc of an octopus.
Tyrants though they be, an enemy hunts them with untiring pertinacity. The Indian looks upon the octopus as an alderman does on turtle, and devours it with equal gusto and relish, only the savage roasts the glutinous carcase instead of boiling it. His mode of catching octopi is crafty in the extreme, for redskin well knows, from past experience, that were the octopus once to get some of its huge arms over the side of the canoe, and at the same time a holdfast on the wrack, it could as easily haul it over as a child could upset a basket; but he takes care not to give a chance, and thus the Indian secures his prize.
Paddling the canoe close to the rocks, and quietly pushing aside the wrack, the savage peers through the crystal water, until his practised eye detects an octopus, with its great ropelike arms stiffened out, waiting patiently for food. His spear is twelve feet long, armed at the end with four pieces of hard wood, made harder by being baked and charred in the fire: these project about fourteen inches beyond the spear-haft, each piece having a barb on one side, and are arranged in a circle round the spear-end, and lashed firmly on with cedar-bark. Having spied out the octopus, the hunter passes the spear carefully through the water until within an inch or so of the centre disc, and then sends it in as deep as he can plunge it. Writhing with pain and passion, the octopus coils its terrible arms round the haft; redskin, making the side of the canoe a fulcrum for his spear, keeps the struggling monster well off, and raises it to the surface of the water. He is dangerous now; if he could get a holdfast on either savage or canoe, nothing short of chopping off the arms piecemeal would be of any avail.