“Oh!” she cried. “Why did you wait? I told you not to.” She slipped into her seat. “I’m so hungry!” she sighed.
The hot coffee and the abundant meal lightened the spirits of the trio in spite of the predicament in which they found themselves. With a ship, albeit a crippled one, under their feet and with plenty of food and water at hand, it was not in human nature to despair, especially as the sea had gone down so much that it no longer threatened them.
To both Jackson and Miss Fairfax the worst seemed to be over; in a day or two some one would pick them up, they thought, and all would be well. Howard alone, wiser in the ways of the sea, doubted. He listened to the others’ hopeful prognostications, but said little.
“I must study the situation before I can say anything,” was as far as he would commit himself, even in answer to a direct question.
When they had finished their meal, Dorothy rose.
“I’ll clear away these dishes,” she announced. “I’m sure you two have more important things to attend to. Later, when Mr. Howard has studied the situation, as he wishes, we will hold a council of war.”
Howard bowed and went on deck. His first glance assured him that his worst fears were true. The Queen was evidently far within the Sargasso Sea, and under the impulse of a strong breeze from the west was steadily driving eastward, into ever-thickening fields of weeds.
Wreckage was floating here and there, mute evidence of disasters that had occurred, perhaps close at hand, perhaps thousands of miles away. The passages of open water that had trellised the sea an hour before had disappeared, and with them had gone whatever faint hope Howard might have had of rescue.
No skipper would venture into that tangle; no boat could move through it; almost it seemed that one could walk on it; yet Howard knew that any one trusting to that deceptive firmness would drown, and drown without even a chance to swim. The weeds would coil round him, soft, slimy, but strong, and drag him down.
Like all who have sailed these waters, Howard had heard many tales of the great Sargasso Sea, and had whiled away many an hour listening to the sailors’ yarns of the haven of dead ships buried far within those tangled confines—a haven in the middle of the ocean, a haven without a harbor, a haven where the ships, dropping to pieces at last by slow decay, must sink for two miles or more before they reached the floor of the ocean.