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even a passing bird, if one would pass, which none would do save once or twice a stately tropic-bird, wheeling round aloft like an eagle, was hailed as an event in the day; and, on the 9th of December, the appearance of the first fragments of gulf-weed caused quite a little excitement, and set an enthusiastic pair of naturalists a midland hunting squire, and a travelled scientific doctor who had been twelve years in the Eastern Archipelago fishing eagerly over the bows, with an extemporised grapple of wire, for gulf-weed, a specimen of which they did not catch.
And so they sailed on again on a westward course. They were still in the Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear water, bright green leaves.
Mops, dripping with brine, supplied the place of hoary locks; gulf-weed, of which acres were floating within a league of the ship, composed a sort of negligent mantle; and in his hand he bore a trident made of three marling-spikes properly arranged and borne on the staff of a half-pike.
Another wise man, of the same kidney as the long-winded chap of the theory I've just explained, says that the gulf- weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and promontories of the Florida coast and that it is torn thence by the action of the great Atlantic current that bears it many miles from its home; though, strangely enough, I have never seen any gulf-weed growing on rocks in the Gulf of Florida or in any of the adjacent seas, nor has any one else to my knowledge!"
"Gulf-weed?" exclaimed the skipper's voice again from the cabin, sounding a bit muffled as if he were in the act of pulling his shirt over his head. "Are you certain?" "Aye," affirmed the other. "There's not the slightest doubt about it. It's as plain as a pike staff, sir."
Now these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to us." "How strange, sir," said I. "Just like an aquarium plant. It is strange!"
From his journal the word "gold" suddenly disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May.
And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled as they splashed the spray into each other's faces, or where we passed a stray scrap of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets, as if imploring them to be still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.
And the singular appearance of the ocean, thickly matted over with gulf-weed, caused great alarm among his companions, who thought they had reached the limits of navigation. A current of a character similar to the Gulf Stream only not so strong is experienced along the east coast of Africa, from Mozambique to the Lagullas Bank, off the Cape of Good Hope.
All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my hitting out two or three times getting in one smasher on the mate's jaw that was a comfort to me and then something hard cracking me on the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea, sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before a sudden strong draught of wind.
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