Page:The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).djvu/261

 “Here is a book,” I said, taking up the little volume, “which first brought light into what might have been for ever dark. It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer J. G. Wood. Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea Capillata is the miscreant’s full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra. Let me briefly give this extract.

“‘If the bather should see a loose roundish mass of tawny membranes and fibres, something like very large handfuls of lion’s mane and silver paper, let him beware, for this is the fearful stinger, Cyanea Capillata.’ Could our sinister acquaintance be more clearly described?

“He goes on to tell his own encounter with one when swimming off the coast of Kent. He found that the creature radiated almost invisible filaments to the distance of fifty feet, and that anyone within that circumference from the deadly centre was in danger of death. Even at a distance the effect upon Wood was almost fatal. ‘The multitudinous threads caused light scarlet lines upon the skin which on closer examination resolved into minute dots or postules, each dot charged as it were with a red-hot needle making its way through the nerves.’

“The local pain was, as he explains, the least part of the exquisite torment. ‘Pangs shot through the chest, causing me to fall as if struck by a bullet. The pulsation would cease, and then the heart would give six or seven leaps as if it would force its way through the chest.’