“Well, this gets me!” cried the inspector. “What was it, Mr. Holmes? I’m born and bred in these parts, but I never saw such a thing. It don’t belong to Sussex.”
“Just as well for Sussex,” I remarked. “It may have been the southwest gale that brought it up. Come back to my house, both of you, and I will give you the terrible experience of one who has good reason to remember his own meeting with the same peril of the seas.”
When we reached my study, we found that Murdoch was so far recovered that he could sit up. He was dazed in mind, and every now and then was shaken by a paroxysm of pain. In broken words he explained that he had no notion what had occurred to him, save that terrific pangs had suddenly shot through him, and that it had taken all his fortitude to reach the bank.
“Here is a book,” I said, taking up the little volume, “which first brought light into what might have been forever 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 of 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