"Something slippery and slimy. Oh, save me!"
"If it was a devil-fish we'd see something of it," thought Dick, and he dashed in and then under water. In a moment he had hold of Leander's legs and was slashing away vigorously with his knife—at a mass of drifting seaweed!
It was a tough job; but once Dick knew he had not some animal to contend with, or monster of the deep, he grew calmer, and in a minute more Leander was free, and the others were helping him back to the yacht.
Dick brought with him some of the seaweed, which was dark green in color and covered with a whitish slime which gave one a shiver to touch.
Poor Leander was too exhausted to stand, upon reaching the deck, and had to be assisted to the cabin, where he was rubbed down and put to bed.
All on board examined the seaweed with interest.
"It's alive; don't ye forgit thet," observed old Jacob. "An' if Leander hadn't been cut away by Dick, he would have been pulled under, jest as sartin as if he had been tied to a rope. Sometimes thet seaweed covered an acre or more of the ocean. I don't know wot the scientific name is, but us old sailors used to call it Old Nick's hot-bed."
"And a hot-bed it must make," put in Don. "I don't think I want to go swimming around here again."
"The weed winds around anything that it happens to touch, and then it begins to contract, and that pulls the thing down. Many a poor sailor has lost his life through foolin' with Old Nick's hot-bed," concluded old Jacob.
On the day following, the breeze freshened once more, and the Dashaway bowled along merrily. Toward evening all hands began to watch for land, but it did not appear. Yet about nine o'clock in the evening they sighted numerous lights clustered together almost directly south of the yacht.