I AM BETRAYED.
All this time I had kept close to my right hand a repeating rifle;
but under the pretext of wishing to shoot some wild fowl, my
companion gained possession of it and moved off to the bow of the
boat. I thought nothing of this act for some time, but I observed
that Gray always left the gun forward when he came amidships to
attend to the engine.
When, at the end of three hours, we had come within plain sight of
the great cluster of swaying hulks, and had reached a point where
many small canals radiated from a central pool, my companion, the
artist, promptly indicated the channel that I was to take and showed
a familiarity with the landmarks that actually startled me. He would
say: “Steer for that redwood tree on the port bow; bear ’round by
that logwood trunk; keep wide out, and avoid the wire grass on the
right just ahead; take care here, there’s a sunken tree; put the helm
hard down or we won’t round this corner,” and many other expressions
indicating previous knowledge of the place.
I was on the point of asking him several times whether he knew or
simply divined the obstructions, but I was so busy watching his
movements, which now had aroused my suspicions, that I did not
scrutinize the prospect ahead. For that reason we had approached
within a short distance of the community of floating wrecks before I
gave it careful survey.
Unslinging my glass, I focused it upon the first large vessel,
and was startled to find objects moving about its decks. Uttering
an exclamation of astonishment, I hailed my companion for an
explanation. He burst into a hysterical laugh, but made no answer.
“What are they?” I asked. “Brownies or living people?”
“They are my countrymen!” was his reply, with an arrogance that was
offensive to me.
My first thought was to reach for my Winchester and compel him to
return to the Caribas; but the gun was in his possession.
A moment later the engine quit working--evidently due to some false
adjustment by Gray. I also discovered that the oars I had placed in
the boat for use in case of accident had been dropped overboard,
unobserved by me.
Though I had been brought up on the sea, knew no other life, and
had passed through all sorts of dangers of calm and storm, I became
imbued with an indescribable dread of my companion and of the strange
people on the floating derelicts.
Carried by a current that I had not before observed, we were soon
within hailing distance of a large hulk, and my companion gave a
signal that was clearly recognized by the people on board.
Low as we were in the water, seated in the launch, I am sure that
fully 500 vessels of all sizes, descriptions and conditions were in
sight. Some of them were moss-grown. Others were covered with coats
of barnacles inches in thickness. Many were bright and new as the
day on which they left the ways and took their first plunge into the
briny deep.
As we slowly drifted onward we were hailed from every ship we
passed. The language was a weird and curious one, apparently a
compound of all the modern tongues. All known languages of the world
were represented. Though my early education had been indifferent,
extensive travel had made me more or less familiar with Spanish,
French, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Russian, German, Greek,
Danish and, I may say, several dialects of some of these languages.
Therefore I could follow the trend of the conversation between my
companion and the Sargassons.
Their speech chiefly concerned me. Little by little I became
cognizant of the fact that I had been lured away from my ship and
into the hands of this strange people by this pretended artist
emissary of the Sargassons. What the purpose of this kidnapping was
did not at once appear. I could not comprehend of what possible
service I could be to this community. The few valuables that I
carried about my person, such as the Winchester gun, my watch and
diamond pin, could have little value in their hands, because they
had no occasions on which to display articles of jewelry. I soon
discovered that my companion, the supposed artist, was well known
throughout the community. He was hailed in a dozen different tongues
from as many different vessels, and always in a respectful and
familiar tone.
During all this time I had remained motionless at the stern of the
launch, deliberating upon some plan by which I could get rid of my
companion, and regain possession of the little craft, in which, by
some miraculous means, I hoped to be able to return to my ship. The
break-down of the machinery had, however, cut off that possibility.
Capture seemed inevitable, although I fully realized that, had I
possession of my Winchester gun, with the belt full of cartridges
that I still retained about my waist, I could hold at bay the entire
Sargasson nation. I reasoned at the time, and, as I afterwards
ascertained, correctly, that powder was scarce among the Sargassons.
My first impulse had been to shoot my treacherous companion with the
revolver I carried in my hip pocket. But I discovered that it did
not contain a single loaded cartridge, and the recognition of that
fact by my guard, who, from the bow of the boat, constantly kept me
under cover with my own gun, increased his confidence and caused
him to jeer at me. I therefore made the best of a bad situation and
surrendered. I took one precaution, however, that was to secretly
loosen the belt of cartridges from my waist and drop it into the sea.
A line made of twisted sea grass was finally thrown to Gray from
one of the largest vessels, and we were soon drawn alongside. This
hulk stood fully twenty-five feet out of water, and was imbedded in
a thoroughly compact mass of floating verdure. As the boat was made
fast to a narrow strip of sod and interlaced twigs that separated the
vessel from the open water, my companion sprang out lightly upon a
tree trunk, and, addressing me familiarly, said:
“We land here, captain.”
There was nothing for me to do but to comply with his suggestion,
and, making my way forward to the landing place, I sprang out of the
boat as gayly as I could be expected to do under the circumstances.
No sooner had my feet touched the mass of floating sod than I was
made acquainted with a new and startling horror. I found the mass
of tangled herbage alive with crawling insects, upon which large
serpents, that abounded in great numbers, fed.
The trees that form a large portion of this garbage heap of the
Atlantic are brought down from the upper Amazon during the tremendous
freshets that prevail under the equator and are carried through from
the Caribbean Sea and the gulf to the midocean swirl, where they
reach their final haven. Their track throughout is along the current
of the Gulf Stream, whose warm waters protect the animal life that
happens to be upon the trees at the time they are carried out to sea.
I afterwards learned that at one time marmosets from Brazil existed
in considerable numbers in Sargasso, but the large serpents finally
had exterminated them. I always had had a horror of snakes and
lizards, and I therefore made haste to cross the quivering bog-holes
leading directly to the water below.
My captor followed, encouraging me and directing me where to step in
order to avoid mishaps. For the reason I have named, I gladly sprang
up the ladder that had been constructed on the side of the ship as
soon as I reached it.
At the ship’s side, as I emerged above it, stood a man of unusually
strange appearance. As I soon came to know him, he was the Kantoon of
the particular communal family having its habitation on that ship.
He was 60 years of age, with a grizzly gray beard, clipped or singed
to an almost uniform length of three inches, that covered his face.
His dress was made of what I afterwards discovered to be sun-tanned
porpoise skin. His cap was of dark-brown leather, that had apparently
done duty as a cushion cover. But I experienced another surprise
when, on stepping over the gunwale to the deck, I found that the
commander of the craft stood up to his knees in a tub of water!
The old man received me with dignified but gruff courtesy. His manner
favorably impressed me. I reflected that, likely as not, my companion
was an eccentric fellow, who thought to perpetrate a practical joke
on me by pretending that he had brought me to this ship under guard
and by force, and causing me to believe that I would be shot if I
disobeyed him. My companion spoke to the Kantoon in Portuguese, and,
having introduced me as the captain of the steamship Caribas, added:
“She is a fine boat, almost new, and would make a very desirable
accession to our community.”
This was the first suggestion I received of the thought that
afterward became a terrible reality. Thus were confirmed all my
fears, and thus was I made aware of the cunningly contrived
conspiracy by which I had been lured from my ship in order that she
might fall an easy prey, by midnight surprise, to the heartless
Sargassons. Nothing that had happened filled me with such terror as
this information. My mortification and danger were enough to shatter
the nerves of any man; but when I fully realized, as I did within the
first half day aboard my prison-house, the tragic fate that awaited
my companions, I was beside myself with rage and chagrin.
Meanwhile, I had been assigned to a small room that apparently had
been prepared for me amidships, just under the deck. It would have
been a comfortable enough place in which to have passed a few days
in an overcrowded vessel, but when I discovered that it was closed
by a heavy wooden door, with a strong bolt upon the outer side, I
understood that I was virtually a prisoner, and that at such times
as I could not be kept under the strictest surveillance I would be
locked up.
The furnishings of the small cabin consisted of a bunk, without
any bed coverings, made of woven grass cloth and stuffed with a
pulpy seaweed that resembled the material from which our tapioca of
commerce is made. I afterward found this bed comfortable enough, and,
had it not been that I was a prisoner, my quarters would have been
quite endurable. Strangely enough, one or two rude pictures adorned
the walls. They were either carvings in wood or had been burned into
the oak partitions with a hot iron years before the ship became a
derelict. Each carving or picture was evidently by a different hand,
and one of them, in my opinion, possessed considerable merit. They
reminded me of the drawings and carvings upon the walls of the Tower
of London in the cells of the condemned.
They added another chill to my already drooping spirits, and I
concluded that escape from these unnatural human monsters would be
difficult.