Now I noticed that the banks of weed were nearer, very much nearer, and a disagreeable thought came to me. This vast rift that had allowed us to penetrate into the very nucleus of the Sargasso Sea - suppose it should close!
It would mean inevitably that there would be one more among the missing - another unanswered mystery of the inscrutable ocean. I resisted the thought, and came back more directly into the present.
Evidently the wind was still dropping, for we were moving slowly, as a glance at the ever-nearing weed-banks told me. The hours passed on, and my breakfast, when the steward brought it, I took to one of die ports, and there ate; for I would lose nothing of the strange surroundings into which we were so steadily plunging.
And so the morning passed.
It was about an hour after dinner that I observed the open channel between the weed-banks to be narrowing almost minute by minute with uncomfortable speed. I could do nothing except watch and surmise.
At times I felt convinced that the immense masses of weed were closing in upon us, but I fought off the thought with the more hopeful one that we were surely approaching some narrowing outlet of the gulf that yawned so far across the seaweed.
By the time the afternoon was half-through, the weed-banks had approached so close that occasional out-jutting masses scraped the yacht’s sides in passing. It was now with the stuff below my face, within a few feet of my eyes, that I discovered the immense amount of life that stirred among all the hideous waste.
Innumerable crabs crawled among the seaweed, and once, indistinctly, something stirred among the depths of a large outlying tuft of weed. What it was I could not tell, though afterwards I had an idea; but all I saw was something dark and glistening. We were past it before I could see more.
The steward was in the act of bringing in my tea, when from above there came a noise of shouting, and almost immediately a slight jolt. The man put down the tray he was carrying, and glanced at me, with startled expression.
‘What is it, Jones?’ I questioned.
‘I don’t know sir. I expect it’s the weed,’ he replied.
I ran to the port, craned out my head, and looked forward. Our bow seemed to be embedded in a mass of weeds, and as I watched it came further aft.
Within the next five minutes we had driven through it into a circle of sea that was free from the weed. Across this we seemed to drift, rather than sail, so slow was our speed.
Upon its opposite margin we brought up the vessel swinging broadside on to the weed, being secured thus with a couple of kedges cast from the bows and stern, though of this I was not aware until later. As we swung, and at last I was able from my port to see ahead, I saw a thing that amazed me.
There, not three hundred feet distant across the quaking weed, a vessel lay embedded. She had been a three-master; but of these only the mizzen was standing. For perhaps a minute I stared, scarcely breathing in my exceeding interest.
All around above her bulwarks to the height of apparently some ten feet, ran a son of fencing formed, so far as I could make out, from canvas, rope, and spars. Even as I wondered at the use of such a thing, I heard my chum’s voice overhead. He was hailing her:
‘Graiken, ahoy!’ he shouted. ‘Graiken, ahoy!’
At that I fairly jumped. Graiken! What could he mean! I stared out of the port. The blaze of the sinking sun flashed redly upon her stern, and showed the lettering of her name and port; yet the distance was too great for me to read.
I ran across to my table to see if there were a pair of binoculars in the drawers. I found one in the first I opened; then I ran back to the port, racking them out as I went. I reached it, and clapped them to my eyes. Yes; I saw it plainly, her name Graiken and her port London.
From her name my gaze moved to that strange fencing about her. There was a movement in the aft part. As I watched a portion of it slid to one side, and a man’s head and shoulders appeared.
I nearly yelled with the excitement of that moment. I could scarcely believe the thing I saw. The man waved an arm, and a vague hail reached us across the weed, then he disappeared. A moment later a score of people crowded the opening, and among them I made out distinctly the face and figure of a girl.
‘He was right, after all!’ I heard myself saying out loud in a voice that was toneless through very amazement.
In a minute, I was at the door, beating it with my fists. ‘Let me out, Ned! Let me out!’ I shouted.
I felt that I could forgive him all the indignity that I had suffered. Nay, more; in a queer way way I had a feeling that it was I who needed to ask him for forgiveness. All my bitterness had gone, and I wanted only to be out and give a hand in the rescue.
Yet though I shouted, no one came, so that at last I returned quickly to the port, to see what further developments there were.
Across the weed I now saw that one man had his hands up to his mouth shouting. His voice reached me only as a faint, hoarse cry; the distance was too great for anyone aboard the yacht to distinguish its import.
From the derelict my attention was drawn abruptly to a scene alongside. A plank was thrown down on to the weed, and the next moment I saw my chum swing himself down the side and leap upon it.
I had opened my mouth to call out to him that I would forgive all were I but freed to lend a hand in this unbelievable rescue.
But even as the words formed they died, for though the weed appeared so dense, it was evidently incapable of bearing any considerable weight, and the plank, with Barlow upon it, sank down into the weed almost to his waist.
He turned and grabbed at the rope with both hands, and in the same moment he gave a loud cry of sheer terror, and commenced to scramble up the yacht’s side.
As his feet drew clear of the weed I gave a short cry. Something was curled about his left ankle - something oily, supple and tapered. As I stared another rose up out from the weed and swayed through the air, made a grab at his leg, missed and appeared to wave aimlessly. Others came towards him as he struggled upwards.
Then I saw hands reach down from above and seize Barlow beneath the arms. They lifted him by main force, and with a mass of weed that enfolded something leathery, from which numbers of curling arms writhed.
A hand slashed down with a sheath-knife, and the next instant the hideous thing had fallen back among the weed.
For a couple of seconds longer I remained, my head twisted upwards; then faces appeared once more over our rail, and I saw the men extending arms and fingers, pointing. From above me there rose a hoarse chorus of fear and wonder, and I turned my head swiftly to glance down and across that treacherous extraordinary weed world.
The whole of the hitherto silent surface was all of a move in one stupendous undulation - as though life had come to all that desolation.
The undulatory movement continued, and abruptly, in a hundred places, the seaweed was tossed up into sudden billowy hillocks. From these burst mighty arms, and in an instant the evening air was full of them, hundreds and hundreds, coming toward the yacht.
‘Devil-fishes!’ shouted a man’s voice from the deck. ‘Octopuses! My Gord!’
Then I caught my chum shouting.
‘Cut the mooring ropes!’ he yelled.
This must have been done almost on the instant, for immediately there showed between us and the nearest weed a broadening gap of scummy water.
‘Haul away, lads!’ I heard Barlow shouting; and the same instant I caught the splash, splash of something in the water on our port side. I rushed across and looked out. I found that a rope had been carried across to the opposite seaweed, and that the men were now warping us rapidly from those invading horrors.