“The most energetic explorer of land or sea would find himself baffled as regards the Sargasso Sea. It is neither solid enough to walk upon, nor liquid enough to afford a passage to a boat.
“Of course it is quite conceivable that a very determined party of pioneers might cut a passage for a small boat even to the centre. The work would take an immense time, however, and the channel would certainly close up behind them as they proceeded.”
All these facts had been well studied and considered by Antonio.
No more daring mariner than he ever sailed the seas.
Now let the truth be told: so far into the Sargasso Sea had the ship drifted before the anchor had been lowered, that the weird little captain had not the slightest hopes of ever getting free again. Nothing less than a miracle, it seemed, could aid them, and the only miracles nowadays are the miracles of science.
There was nothing to look forward to but imprisonment here for life. The provisions would not last for ever; they would be compelled to live on the fish they might catch among the weeds, or the little brown crabs that clung to their stems.
But this life could not last long, for fuel would fail them. Already they were dependent for water on the condensed steam from the pumping engine. When the coal was finished, water itself would no longer be attainable. The look-out was sad and terrible in the extreme. One by one, the more weakly first, they would drop off and die, till hardly hands enough would be left to bury the dead. And who would be the last man?
Alone on this sad brown sea, he must inevitably become a raving maniac, and perhaps forestall fate by throwing himself into the ocean of weeds.
You must give Antonio credit therefore for bravery and wisdom, when I tell you that he not only determined to keep all those sad forebodings to himself, but determined also to make an attempt to navigate, by means of a specially constructed boat, as much as possible of the great Sargasso Sea itself.
So well had he studied everything during his life in the romantic old windmill, that there was hardly a useful appliance of a scientific character that was not to be found on board the good ship Zingara.