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Toward evening, on the seventh day after their adventure with the Sargasso Sea, the travelers closed the man hole, and with air tanks well filled slowly sank beneath the waves. Supper was eaten at a depth of sixty feet, and after the meal, while Washington was washing the dishes, the others sat and looked out through the bull's-eyes at the big fishes which floated past.
The North Star, toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said, changed its position. This quieted the sailors for a while. When they had been about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea.
To get out of call from the wire it is necessary to go to sea and stay there. Another hundred years, and even the seafarer will fail of seclusion. Floating telegraph-offices will buoy the cable. Latitude 40° will "call" the Equator, and warn Grand Banks that "Sargasso is passing by." Not only will the march of Morse be under the mountain-wave, but his home will be on the deep.
There a week was spent in inspecting the beauties and the wonders of the old volcanic caverns, before they were well at sea again with the sun daily growing hotter and sea and sky more beautiful. Days upon days were spent in exploring the attractions of the Sargasso Sea, till the doctor cried "Hold! Enough!"
It is strange that any one should think of this theory of the slime who had not seen or heard of the Sargasso Sea that great bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents collect and retain in the middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
Without a word, all three quit squirming, caught their floats under their armpits and swung down in a limp luxurious rest. Then they saw a marvelous thing had happened. The same slow swirl of the Sargasso current that had closed up their avenue on the west side, had opened another on the east. Their way toward the schooner lay unobstructed.
"We'd woipe 'em out, wouldn't we? We'll make it, too. If we stood off th' little didapper all night, you know we can all day." Madden considered the fleet little vessel. "No, I rather think she will capture us." "And how's that?" "The Sargasso doesn't extend indefinitely. In fact we are nearing the southern limit. Have you taken a look forward?"
An extensive tract of water is this, enclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's vessels on his first voyage across the ocean.
The name Sargasso comes from the Spanish word "sargazo," meaning gulfweed. This gulfweed, the swimming gulfweed or berry carrier, is the chief substance making up this immense shoal. And here's why these water plants collect in this placid Atlantic basin, according to the expert on the subject, Commander Maury, author of The Physical Geography of the Sea.
But what I was comin' to was this there are, as you know, eddies and stagnant places in ornary rivers, where sticks, leaves, and other odds and ends collect and remain fixed. These eddies or stagnant parts are called sargasso seas.
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