I wasn’t sure how seriously to take his warning, but, when I accidentally used his name, he became tense. “Careful, mate,” he said. “Careful.”
Later that day, O’Shea was standing on the cabin porch, smoking a cigarette, when a villager approached. “Are you the guy chasing them monsters?” he asked.
O’Shea looked at him hesitantly. “I’m afraid that would be me,” he said.
“I saw you on the telly, talking about them things,” the man said. He reached out his hand. “After I saw you, I named my cat Architeuthis.”
O’Shea brightened. “This mate here has a cat named Archie,” he told Conway and me.
O’Shea invited the man in for “a cuppa,” and soon he and the stranger were bent down over his maps. “They say you can find the big calamari out here,” the man said, pointing to a reef.
Before long, another villager stopped by and was offering his own advice. “I’d try over here,” he said. “Billy Tomlin said he once found a big dead one out in these parts.” O’Shea took in the information. Fishermen sometimes embroider the truth, he said, but they also know the local waters better than anyone else.
That night, we went out again. Although we continued to haul up enormous quantities of shrimp and krill-sometimes there were so many that they could barely move inside the tank-we found not a single squid.
As the night lengthened, O’Shea seemed, for the first time, to grow dispirited. “The weather’s causing havoc with the currents,” he said.
After each haul, he’d study his charts and choose a new spot with renewed hope-“This could be it,” he’d say-only to be disappointed again. When the sun rose, at six-thirty, casting its bright rays upon the sea, O’Shea raced the boat over to the two anchored traps. He said that he had often had the best luck at dawn; the creatures seemed to rear their heads before vanishing deep below. “Let’s see what we got,” he said, hauling the nets on board.
“Anything?” Conway asked.
O’Shea held one of the nets up to his eye, then dropped it in disgust. “Diddly,” he said.
“We have to go farther out,” O’Shea said the following night. We sped far into the Pacific, leaving the safety of the inlet behind. The hauls remained dismal; after each one, he aimed the boat farther out to sea, saying, “We have to go deeper, that’s all.”
Conway, who was looking increasingly pale, said, “Haven’t we gone out enough?”
“I know the squid are out there,” O’Shea said.
The less he found, the harder he seemed to work. He is not a big man, and his childhood illness had left his body somewhat brittle, yet he never slowed down as he pulled the net in with all its weight, then returned it to the water. His fingers were covered in blisters, his clothes were soaked through, and his glasses were stained with salt from the seawater.
“He’s a bit of a fanatic, isn’t he?” Conway said quietly.
As the cold nights wore on, we worked in a kind of fog. We were getting little sleep during the day, and it became harder to pay attention to the mounds of larval fish, shrimp, krill, and jellyfish; not even the sight of dolphins jumping in the waters nearby relieved the drudgery. At one point, I felt fatigued, and lay down in the forward berth. I could fit only if I bent my knees toward my chest. As I closed my eyes and listened to the waves smashing against the hull, I could hear O’Shea grunting as he pulled in another net and cursing when there was nothing inside.
On yet another night, at around four in the morning, as we pulled in the trawling gear and dropped the contents in the cylindrical tank, Conway shone a flashlight and asked, “What’s that?”
O’Shea peered inside, and blinked several times, trying to keep himself awake. “Heaven help us!” he shouted. “It’s a fucking squid!” He stared blearily into its eyeball. “It looks like Archie,” he told us.
Although the creature was only the size of my thumbnail, I could see it, too-its tentacles, its fins, its eyes, its arms, its bullet-shaped mantle.
“This could be your dream squid,” Conway said.
“Quick,” O’Shea said. “Let’s drain some of the krill before they crush it.”
He held the cylindrical tank in the air, his arms shaking from exhaustion, as the waves pounded the side of the boat. “Steady!” he yelled. It was hard to see in the darkness-there was no moonlight-and as he poured some of the contents into a strainer, struggling to balance against the violent waves, something happened.
“Where did it go?” O’Shea asked.
“I don’t know,” Conway said. “I can’t see it anymore.”
“Jesus Christ,” O’Shea said.
He grabbed a specially designed tank, which he had purchased expressly for transporting a baby giant squid, and poured the rest of the cylindrical tank’s contents inside it. “Where is the bloody thing?” he said. “Where is it?”
He reached in with his hand, stirring the water frantically. “It has to be here,” he said.
He pulled out one shrimp, then another, holding them under the light.
“It’s gone,” Conway said.
But O’Shea didn’t seem to hear. He sifted through the mounds of plankton, trying to find the baby squid’s microscopic tentacles. At last, he stumbled backward, and put his arms over his head. “It’s a fucking catastrophe,” he said.
He fell back in the captain’s chair, and sat motionless. I tried to think of something to say, but failed. “It was right there,” O’Shea said to himself. “I had it.”
After a while, he tried to drop the traps in the water again, but he no longer seemed able to muster his strength. “I can’t take it anymore,” he said, and disappeared into the forward berth.
That afternoon, O’Shea was sitting on the cabin porch, sipping a glass of whiskey. “Want a spot?” he asked.
“That’s all right,” I said.
He spoke in a whisper, and much more slowly than usual. He said he had pinpointed a new location to search, but I told him I thought I would stay behind and catch up on my work. He looked at me for a long moment. “That’s what always happens,” he said. “People get bored and give up. But I can’t pay any attention to what’s going on around me. I just have to stay focussed.”
He took a sip of his whiskey. “I can already hear the critics saying, ‘The great squid hunter lost his blasted squid again.’ Do you know how it feels when everything goes to custard like this?” He fell silent again, then added, “I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to give up. I don’t care if someone finds the squid first. I’ll still go until I find it myself.”
The next morning, when he pushed open the cabin door, he looked despairing. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
It was the end of the expedition; he had to go back to Auckland to lecture. We loaded up the gear and returned to the city. When we got there, O’Shea went to the aquarium to visit his specimens. In his absence, seventeen squid had died. The employee in whose care he had left them had posted a sign on the tank. It said, “They have a new trick… It’s called ‘jumping out of the tank and committing suicide!’”
O’Shea checked the temperature and salinity of the water in the tank, and offered the remaining squid some sprat. Then we drove to his house. As he got out of his car, he said, “You may want to take a look at this.”
He led me into the garage, which was cluttered with tools and appliances. He started to clear off an enormous box. “You better put this on,” he said, and handed me a gas mask.
I slipped it over my face, and he opened the top of the bin. Inside was a dead giant squid. “It’s a twenty-seven-foot male,” he said.
The carcass was ivory white and was floating in embalming fluids; its arms were so long that they were bunched together in folds, and its suckers were the size of a child’s fist. “I’m preparing this one for a museum,” he said.