Such was the kraken, and with such an example before one it is no wonder that the learned world continued to fight stubbornly against the admission of tentacles more than seven or eight feet long, and eight inches round at the base. However, they still went on growing, and have become, at last, more authentic, so that there is now little doubt that the cuttlefish, on which the great cachalot habitually feeds, are sometimes of a size sufficient to bear comparison with his own enormous bulk. That they ever equal it—at least in weight—I should certainly hesitate to affirm, but that there are mighty cephalopods, whose eight or ten arms are capable of clasping the huge barrel of a sperm-whale’s body, and must, therefore, be some thirty feet in length, appears to be settled by ocular demonstration. Mr. Bullen, to whose interesting work, _The Cruise of the Cachalot_, I am indebted for most of this chapter, was once looking over his ship’s side at midnight, when there arose in the midst of that broad and shining pathway which the full moon of the tropics flings down upon the sea, a very large cachalot struggling with and, as it soon appeared, devouring a squid, or cuttlefish, which Mr. Bullen distinctly says was almost as large as itself. The great arms of this eerie-looking creature were writhed about the whale’s vast head, almost, if not quite, the hugest part of him, and certainly so, when, as was constantly here the case, the jaws were distended. As for the head of the cuttlefish, Mr. Bullen, after a very careful examination of it through the night-glasses—and it must be remembered that there was the whale’s head beside it, to compare it with—came to the conclusion that it was, at least, as large as one of the ship’s pipes, holding 850 gallons, but probably a good deal larger. The eyes alone he estimated as at least a foot in diameter. Huge as was this cuttlefish, it had not the smallest chance in its struggle with the cachalot. True struggle, indeed, as between the two, there was none, for the whale was simply eating the cuttlefish, nor did he experience any difficulty in doing so.