The sea was a gray swirling mass that morning, a tangle of serpents writhing and frothing making mist with their forked submarine tongues. An island in the distance, moments before looked like some uncharted pirate's cove of a place, but now it might be the hump of some enormous leviathan sticking partially out of the water, dangling below the surface. The rain pelted down in drops the size of fists, and permeated everything visible to the eye, and some things that weren't.

Nicholas Starbuck, stared out the window, watching the beasts of the water forming their myriad shapes as they beached themselves on the dark sand.

From his house on the promontory that overlooked those giant crashing gray waves it was clearly evident what kind of day lay ahead of him. Of course, they'd have to take the trawler out tonight, but they'd have to go into town for supplies first. Yes, Jake had mentioned that.

Yet, Starbuck made no motion to get up and act on any of these plans. He continued to stare into the sea. As he did this, as he always did, he furrowed his brow and curved up his lower lip into a sort of sticking out cleft. It gave one the impression of an angry gargoyle. He did look like one, perched on his chair staring at the driving rain. Something seemed to be speaking to him in some strange tongue only he could understand. But then he broke this trance and stood up.

The old brown floorboards creaked loudly under his weight, although he did not weigh much. By any standards, Starbuck looked a weak man; however, those who thought him weak had never seen him at work on the sea. His squidboat was the best in the New Zealand area, and he made a rather profitable living for someone in his occupation. His frame was gaunt and angular; his face somewhat rectangular; his eyes a light blue, and his smile seemed weatherworn and dogeared from many voyages and turmoil in the brine.

Night came, with new nets and a crew in high spirits, the S.S. Melville left the docks. Starbuck steered the boat out to sea. Jake, a tall New Zealand native, glared over the edge of their bedraggled but trusted vessel, and Roger, the hired local local boy who manned the nets, pondered the sea with the air of an old salt. The sky, though dimmed by the sun's absence , still held an overcast and almost helpless feeling. But this feeling did not affect any onboard. In fact, the men were used to this rainy season. Did the squid they now approach have any concept of weather above the surface?

There were literally thousands of them, masses upon masses, swimming into, over, around, above and below each other. Jake ran to the edge of the boat and turned on huge halogen lights that illuminated the water showing clearly the decapodal apparitions zipping around each other, their silver eyes gleaming as they passed. They were Loligo, the common squid, little more than fifteen inches from fin tip to tentacle tip, caught by the trillions in the south seas.

"Lower away, Roger!" shouted Starbuck.

The kid did something ambiguous in the dark corner of the ship and then ran forward, throwing the nets off the trawler. As the nets crashed into the waves, blue sharks that had been feeding on the droves of squid, darted away, and the black sillouhette of the spiderweb nets drifted downwards, trapping many of the little white bodied cephalopods.

"This is gonna be a great catch," commented Roger, excited at all the many flailing bodies they were going to be bringing up.

But Starbuck made no answer, his face contorted into that gargoyle seriousness, as he stared overboard at something indistinct in his mind. The sky was black , and the water was pitch as well, so looking out, it was hard now, to tell where one world began and one ended. But the squid, glowed softly, their bodies possessing luminous organs for just such an occasion.

When the nets had sunk totally out of sight, Starbuck ordered "Haul 'em up!"

The grinding wheels turned, but too slowly. Something was wrong.

"We're caught on the bottom!" yelled Roger.

"That's impossible. We're out to sea. There's no bottom, not for us anyway!" yelled Jake.

Starbuck continued to stare into the water.

"Let's yank ourselves free then," he said quietly to both of them.

Jake, piloting the boat now, began by slowly backing it out, away from the nets. He could not work it free. So he upped the speed, and pulled away, hoping to disengage from whatever they had snagged the nets on.

They were far from their original spot now, and yet they were still caught. Maybe it was some kind of rock formation. That gave Jake an idea. The boat had a sonar device on it, for finding squid masses when they were submerged. It picked up everything, whales, fish, squid masses and what the bottom looked like.

The sonar had said there was no bottom to speak of, and certainly nothing like an underwater mountain or rock face. He plotted new coordinates and rechecked the old ones. Whatever it was, it was in the nets. They weren't caught, they were trawling something huge.

Jake ran out and told Roger and Starbuck. Roger stared eagerly over the edge of the boat, hoping to get a look at whatever this was. Starbuck gave the order to secure the line and give the pulley more power to see what this thing was. Like an arm straining, the machine grinded, and looked ready to snap off, but the trawl line continued to come up. As the nets became vaguely visible, Roger's eyes widened.

"Christ! It's alive," he whispered.

The shadow of a huge alien shape hovered underwater, ensnared and hopelessly entangled in the nets. It had coils of arms branching in everydirection, and faintly glowed like the millions of squid around it. It had somehow gotten tangled in the nets.

Perhaps it too had been feeding on the squid, or the sharks.

Starbuck had heard of giant squid before but only half believed stories about their size.

But this was bigger than any squid that had been beached. The two tentacles and the eight arms whipping around and grasping made Starbuck realize that he had to cut the power to the pulley immediately or he'd have an angry squid that was at least a hundred feet long at the surface. The power sputtered off and the squid stayed a dozen yards underwater.

"Are you seeing this?" asked Jake, watching the sinewy shape below them.

"We caught ourselves the grandaddy of all squid, man. Do you have any idea how much one uh those geeks at the marine aquarium would pay for this!?" he continued.

Then Roger piped in, "Those ones that wash up on the beaches around here. My friend's uncle found one once. In fact, he was a squid guy, a teuthologist I think they're called. He found one, and those scientists paid him like a thousand bucks for it cause it was in such good condition. But this, this is something else. We got ourselves some money in that net."

"Well, then let's bring this baby back to the aquarium. She'd be the star attraction," said Starbuck.

They all agreed to this proposition, and carefully they hauled their newfound possession toward the harbor. Jake radioed in to the aquarium, and none of the eggheads believed him at first, but when he described in detail what the creature was and how it was behaving his credibility was no longer doubted.

Bring her to the aquarium's dock sir, right away. We don't want it to get loose. This is a very, very valuable find," said the voice on the other end of the radio. Starbuck responded, "Valuable to who? You or us?"

"Everyone of course. Just be careful with it," said the voice.

Then Roger shouted something, but Jake and Starbuck ignored him.

They didn't quite trust the shifty sounding scientist and were devoting all their attention to concerns in the matter of monetary compensation.

"How much do you think we could stand to make here?" said Jake.

"A lot, providing you get it here safely."

Just then Roger frantically burst into the room shouting.

"It's attached to the boat! It worked a couple of its arms free and it's pulling us down!"

"What?" shouted Starbuck and Jake in unison.

"Hello?" said the voice on the radio.

Starbuck raced to the deck. Indeed, the creature was dragging them down, coil upon coil wrapping like giant worms onto the boat, testing with its suckers the hold it could manage.

And then, in a sudden tentacular flick of determination the arms fastened to the planks; the boat tilted onto its side.

"Sir...Are you there?"

But all the scientist heard was a bizarre crackling noise as the boat shuddered and was dragged under the waves by the infamous Architeuthis dux pulling the crew of the Melville to a dark and watery demise.