"VII. I put twenty-five grains of powdered Physalia in a little 'bouillon;' I swallowed the dose without the least fear, and I felt no inconvenience from it."
After these experiments, which are certainly quite conclusive, what are we to think of the story related of a certain M. Tébé, the managing partner of a house in Guadaloupe, who fell a victim to his cook, who is said, after having sought in vain to poison him with the rasping of his nails, which he had spread carefully over the roasted fish daily served up for dinner, determined, seeing that he had signally failed by other means, to put into his soup a pulverized Physalia. An hour after his repast, this gentleman appeared in the burgh of Lamantin, at a little distance from his habitation, and, while entering the city with some friends, he was seized with violent pains in the stomach and intestines, racking him as if by the most corrosive poison. His illness increased until the next day, when he died, under the most excruciating pains. On examination, the stomach and intestines were found to be violently inflamed and corroded, as if he had been poisoned with arsenic, and I have no doubt that it was with this poison, or some other corrosive substance, that M. Tébé really was poisoned. The negroes never make known the substance with which they commit a poisoning; they confess all but the truth, which they are sworn never to reveal—the means they employ, so far as the poisoning material is concerned, are never communicated by confession.
Fig. 102. Physalia utriculus (Eschscholtz).
The habits of the Physalia are still imperfectly known, but among the many strange forms of brilliant colour and elegant contour, which swarm in the warmer parts of the ocean, "none," says Gosse, "take a stronger hold on the fancy of the beholder; certainly none is more familiar than the little thing he daily marks floating in the sun-lit waves, as the ship glides swiftly by, which the sailors tell him is the Portuguese man-of-war. Perhaps a dead calm has settled over the sea, and he leans over the bulwarks of the ship scrutinizing the ocean-rover at leisure, as it hastily rises and falls on the long, sluggish heavings of the glassy surface. Then he sees that the comparison of the stranger to a ship is a felicitous one, for at a little (Fig. 102) distance it might well be mistaken for a child's mimic boat, shining in all the gaudy painting in which it left the toy-shop.
"Not unfrequently, one of these tiny vessels comes so close alongside, that, by means of the ship's bucket, with the assistance of a smart fellow who has jumped into the 'chains' with a boat-hook, it is captured, and brought on deck for examination. A dozen voices are, however, lifted, warning you by no means to touch it, for well the experienced sailor knows its terrible powers of defence. It does not now appear so like a ship as when it was at a distance. It is an oblong bladder of tough membrane, varying considerably in shape, for no two agree in this respect; varying also in size, from less than an inch to the size of a man's hat. Once, on a voyage to Mobile, when rounding the Florida reef, I was nearly a whole day passing through a fleet of these little Portuguese men-of-war, which studded the smooth sea as far as the eye could reach, and must have extended for many miles. They were of all sizes within the limits I have mentioned."
Generally, there is a conspicuous difference between the two extremities of the bladder, one end being rounded, the other more pointed, or terminating in a small knob-like swelling or beak-shaped excrescence, where there is a minute orifice; sometimes, however, no such excrescence is visible, and the orifice cannot be detected.
"That wonderful river," continues Mr. Gosse, in his nervous, eloquent style, "with a well-defined course through the midst of the Atlantic—that Gulf Stream—brings on its warm waters many of the denizens of tropical seas, and wafts them to the shores on which its waves impinge. Hence it is that so many of the proper pelagic creatures are from time to time observed on the coasts of Cornwall and Devon. The Portuguese man-of-war is among them, sometimes paying its visit in fleets, more commonly in single stranded hulks. Scarcely a season passes without one or more of these lovely strangers occurring in the vicinity of Torquay. Usually," he adds in a note, "in these stranded examples the tentacles and suckers are much mutilated by washing on the shore. The fishermen who pick them up always endeavour to make a harvest of their capture, not by selling, but by making an exhibition of them."
The Physalia seem to be gregarious in their habits, herding together in shoals. Floating on the sea between the tropics in both oceans, they may be seen now carried along by currents, now driven by the trade-winds, dragging behind them their long tentacular appendages, and conspicuous by their rich and varied colouring, from pale crimson to ultramarine blue. "Certainly," says Lesson, "we can readily conceive that a poetical imagination might well compare the graceful form of the Physalia to the most elegant of sailing-vessels, even if it careened to the wind under a sail of satin, and dragged behind it deceitful garlands which struck with death every creature which suffered itself to be attracted by its seductive appearance."