"We now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind."

"A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its center, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct, but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life."