374 NATURE'S TEACHINGS. 



But I equally seem to have a natural affinity for the tentacles 

 of the Stangers, which deliver their envenomed darts just as 

 fiercely when they are separated from the Medusa as when 

 they are connected with it. 



A curious example of this fact befell me in the present year 

 (1875). Seeing that there had been a steady southern gale, 

 which made Lundy Island and Hartland and Baggy Points 

 indiscernible, I dreaded my old foes, and, instead of bathing 

 from the " Pebble Ridge," took to the great " Nassau" Baths 

 at Westward Ho. I sadly missed the roll of the waves, and 

 the placid rapture of lying with outspread arms as the vast 

 Atlantic billows came rolling in, flinging up the great grey 

 boulders as if they were corks, and letting them roll down the 

 ridge again with a thundering, and yet soothing, sound. Three 

 miles or more inland may the thunder of the Pebble Ridge be 

 heard ; and at night, even though a storm be raging, tearing 

 the leaves off the trees in whirling showers, flinging great 

 branches into the air like ostrich plumes, and howling so that 

 one person can hardly hear another speak, the dull, low, con- 

 tinuous thunder of the Pebble Ridge is heard over all. I have 

 often remained awake at Bideford, simply on account of the 

 deep roar of the Pebble Ridge, as the rising tide rolled its vast 

 waves along the coast from Baggy Point, through Westward 

 Ho and Clovelly, to Hartland. 



When there is a heavy sea, the " undertow " of these waves 

 is so great that even had no such things as Stangers existed, I 

 should not have ventured upon the Pebble Ridge. One of my 

 friends, a strong swimmer, was nearly drowned off that ridge 

 by the undertow ; and not long before I visited Westward Ho 

 a promising young man lost his life within a few yards of that 

 treacherous shore. 



Much against my will, I went to the new bath, which is 

 always supplied with a running current of sea- water ; and I 

 had hardly swum the length of the bath before I felt the 

 familiar nettle-like sting in my foot. Fortunately it was only 

 caused by a small fragment of a Stanger's tentacle, which had 

 been severed from the animal and pumped into the bath, and 

 no harm ensued. 



