THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Among the tiny ocean tramps that drift along the Gulf Stream into our northern harbours during September days, when the water gets warm and the weather is calm, none is more strange and lovely than the Portuguese man-o’-war.  It is an iridescent bubble, curtsying to the ripples as the tide bears it along, while flashes of prismatic colour sweep over its surface with every movement of the azure mirror upon which is dances so gaily.

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The instant an unfortunate swims against the invisible nets of this Medusa of the sea, the tentacles cling and wind about it, and from them burst hundreds of exquisitely sharp thread-like and barbed darts which penetrate the victim’s flesh and carry into it a fiery poison that benumbs the nerves and paralyses effort.

Ingersoll/Wild