[CHAPTER IX]
PREPARATION FOR THE VOYAGE
While Jack and Mr. Fannin had been talking the vessel had been moving rapidly northward. The passengers were a mixed lot. On the upper deck were English, Scotch, French, and Americans, while on the lower were Chinamen, a negro or two, and Indians. Many of these had considerable bundles of baggage; and with the Indians were their women, their children, and their dogs.
The rounded islands that rose everywhere from the water showed gray rocky slopes, the yellow of ripened grass, and here and there clumps of evergreen trees. The scene was a lovely one.
"Mr. Fannin," said Hugh, "I wish you'd tell me what's that plant that I see everywhere growing in the water. I suppose, maybe, it's a kind of seaweed, but it's bigger than any seaweed that I ever heard tell of, and there's worlds and worlds of it. The other day on the beach I picked up some of its leaves, if that's what they are, and I found them wonderfully tough. I found I couldn't break them apart with my hands, yet they seemed soft and full of water."
"That's what we call kelp," said Mr. Fannin, "it grows in deep water, and its roots are attached to rocks or to stones or even to the sand at the bottom, and the stalk may be thirty or forty feet long. Down in the deep water the stem is very slender, often scarcely as thick as a quill, but it increases by a gradual taper, until near the top it's nearly as thick as a man's wrist. At the end of the stem or stalk is a globular swelling which varies in size, but may be as big as a baseball. From the top of this swelling point, opposite to where it's attached to the stem, grows a bundle of a dozen or twenty ribbon-like leaves, each from one to six inches wide and from four to six feet long, and fluted or crimped along its edge for the whole length. The plant is brown in color throughout. Responding, as it does, constantly to the motion of the water, it sometimes seems almost alive. It's a queer plant. Sometimes it's a great hindrance to the man who is travelling and sometimes a great help to him."
"I don't quite understand that," said Jack. "I can see that it might be hard work to get through a bed of the kelp like that one over there that we are just passing, but how should it help a man?"
"Why," said Fannin, "the stalks are very strong, and I've seen a large canoe held at anchor by a single stalk of the kelp. Then, too, a big bed of the kelp is a great break to the sea. The waves can't break over a bed of kelp; and I have known of a case when a sudden squall got up, where a canoe, unable to reach shore or to get any other lee, would lie behind a kelp bed and hold onto the stalks until the squall was past."
"Do the Indians make any use of the kelp?" asked Jack.
"Yes," replied Mr. Fannin. "A number of the Indians along the coast select the most slender stems, knot them together, and make fishing lines for the deep-sea fishing, on which they catch halibut sometimes weighing two hundred pounds. These stems are tremendously tough, and they almost never wear out. A man may coil up one of these long lines and hang it in his house for six months, and then, if he takes it down and soaks it in water over night, in the morning it will be pliable and perfectly fit to use."
Hugh had been listening to the conversation, but not taking any part in it; but now he pointed off over the kelp bed and said: "Look there! See those birds walking around on the weed. I reckon they are cranes of some sort or other." Fannin looked at them through his glasses and said, "Yes, that's just what they are. Two of those birds are great blue herons, and the others are large birds, but I can't tell just what they are. That's another thing that the kelp is useful for. You see the plants grow in thick beds, and the stems are continually moving in the current, and after a while they get tangled and twisted up so that it's impossible to force them apart. In that case it's useless to try to force a canoe through them. Then, lying there so long as they do, and keeping the water quiet, a great deal of life is attracted to these beds. There are many fish that live near the surface, and in the warm waters there are crabs that live among the stems and sometimes crawl out on them and rest in the sunshine. There are many shells. All this smaller life entices the larger life, so that gulls and ducks and sandpipers are often seen walking along or resting on the kelp. It is just one of those things that we see often, where a lot of specially favorable conditions will attract the animals that are to be favored by these conditions."