Molluscs in culture Elder (1st century AD) in his "Natural History". The Gorgon of Greek mythology may have been inspired by the octopus or squid, the severed head of Medusa representing the animal, 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". Throughout the world, the
The Sea-Wolf The Sea-Wolf The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London. The book's protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. Its first printing of forty thousand copies was immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous "The Call of the Wild". Ambrose Bierce wrote, "The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of