with vitality;--over all the dunes there is a constant
susurration, a blattering and swarming of crustacea;--through all
the sea there is a ceaseless play of silver lightning,--flashing
of myriad fish. Sometimes the shallows are thickened with
minute, transparent, crab-like organisms,--all colorless as
gelatine. There are days also when countless medusae drift
in--beautiful veined creatures that throb like hearts, with
perpetual systole and diastole of their diaphanous envelops:
some, of translucent azure or rose, seem in the flood the shadows
or ghosts of huge campanulate flowers;--others have the semblance
of strange living vegetables,--great milky tubers, just beginning
to sprout. But woe to the human skin grazed by those shadowy
sproutings and spectral stamens!--the touch of glowing iron is
not more painful... Within an hour or two after their appearance
all these tremulous jellies vanish mysteriously as they came.

Perhaps, if a bold swimmer, you may venture out alone a long
way--once! Not twice!--even in company. As the water deepens
beneath you, and you feel those ascending wave-currents of
coldness arising which bespeak profundity, you will also begin to
feel innumerable touches, as of groping fingers--touches of the
bodies of fish, innumerable fish, fleeing towards shore. The
farther you advance, the more thickly you will feel them come;
and above you and around you, to right and left, others will leap
and fall so swiftly as to daze the sight, like intercrossing
fountain-jets of fluid silver. The gulls fly lower about you,
circling with sinister squeaking cries;--perhaps for an instant
your feet touch in the deep something heavy, swift, lithe, that
rushes past with a swirling shock. Then the fear of the Abyss,
the vast and voiceless Nightmare of the Sea, will come upon you;