“I? Unreasonable?” cried Rodd hotly. “That I’m sure I’m not!”
“Why, sir, wasn’t you put out because your uncle and the old man wouldn’t sail right into the Mediterranean Sea?”
“Well, there was nothing unreasonable in that. I am sure it would have been very interesting.”
“Not it, sir. I’ve been there over and over again, and it always seemed to me just like any other sea, only a bit rougher sometimes, and it aren’t got hardly any tide. You wait till we get a little further on, and you’ll find plenty to make you open you eyes wider than ever you opened them before. I don’t know a finer place for seeing wonders of the deep than along where we are going, as you say we are to, right along the West Coast of Afriky. Why, you might begin fishing and dredging directly after we had put in at Mogador, where the fish are wonderful, and you can’t drop in a line without hauling something out.”
“That’s good,” cried Rodd eagerly; “but I am afraid uncle won’t let us have much time for ordinary fishing. He will be more on the look-out for curiosities.”
“Ah, well, there’s plenty of them too, sir—all sorts, and the farther you gets into warmer water the more there are.”
“What sort?” asked Rodd.
“All sorts, and the nearer you are to land the more you get. Then I suppose some time we shall come upon that there Sargassey Sea.”
“Where’s that?” asked Rodd.
“Right away down south, sir. Let’s see, if I remember right we falls in with that soon after you pass the islands.”