Squid History". The Gorgon of Greek mythology may have been inspired by squid or octopus, the animal itself representing the severed head of Medusa, the beak as the protruding tongue and fangs, and its tentacles as the snakes. The six-headed sea monster of the "Odyssey", Scylla, may have had a similar origin. The Nordic legend of the kraken may also have derived from sightings of large cephalopods; the science fiction writer Jules Verne told a tale of a kraken-like monster in his 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". In literature, H. G. Wells' short story "The Sea Raiders" featured
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within "The Mysterious Island." Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later "Facing the Flag". That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo—for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings—some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests—but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of