Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of a place among the most farfetched teratological legends. 在我的眼前，游动着一头可怕的完全配得上载入那些离奇怪诞的传说中的怪物。

It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. 这是一条8米长的巨大的章鱼。

It was traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the Nautilus. 它非常迅速地往“鹦鹉螺号”船只的同一方向倒退走。

It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea green. 它那巨大的海绿色眼睛盯着我们。

Its eight arms (or more accurately, feet) were rooted in its head, which has earned these animals the name cephalopod; 那八只长在头上、使它被称为头足动物的爪子，或者说八只脚，

its arms stretched a distance twice the length of its body and were writhing like the serpentine hair of the Furies.  伸展时相当于身体的两倍，像复仇三女神的头发一样扭动着。

You could plainly see its 250 suckers, arranged over the inner sides of its tentacles and shaped like semispheric capsules.  我们清楚地看到它的两百五十个吸盘，呈半圆球状，排列在触脚的内侧。

Sometimes these suckers fastened onto the lounge window by creating vacuums against it. 有时，这些吸盘内形成真空紧紧地吸住客厅的玻璃。

The monster's mouth--a beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot--opened and closed vertically. 这头怪物的嘴——像鹦鹉的喙一样是骨质的——垂直地一张一翕。

Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine shears. 它的骨质舌头上武装着好几排尖牙，颤动时活像一把真正的大铁剪。

What a freak of nature! 大自然是多离奇怪诞啊！

A bird's beak on a mollusk! 一只软体动物竟然长着一只鸟喙！

Its body was spindle-shaped and swollen in the middle, a fleshy mass that must have weighed 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms.  它的身体成棱形，中间部位鼓起，形成一块重可达20000到25000公斤的肉。