I have not yet described the weeds, nor need I court classical preciseness in doing so. But there are five or six different species. The principal of these, and the largest, is of immense length, toothed and serrated. It seems to grow from a short stalk, with roots that may or may not have been torn off from the rocks of continents or islands. Be this as it may, it here lives and floats, with the aid of small bladders called berries, and it affords refuge, food, and sustenance to myriads of strange creatures. Not only is this so, but other weeds grow on it, and some of these our heroes found edible and palatable, whether eaten cooked or raw. But other species were independent of their gigantic brothers, and lived a wholly independent life, having bunches of bladders to support them, like clusters of grapes.
. . . . . .
Not only were stores now getting short on board ship, but coals as well, so that the outlook was becoming black and dreary in the extreme.
Antonio often broke down in spirits, and gave way to fits of melancholy in his own cabin by night, but he was always the same pleased and pleasant though weird wee man by day, especially at table.
And in the evening, with his darling guitar on his breast, he excelled himself if possible. No one to see him then could have believed that he saw only starvation and death ahead, and that he entertained scarcely the slightest hope of delivery from this living grave.
He made a balloon ascent about once a week, however, hoping against hope, as it were, that the great sea of weeds might open up, as does an icepack in the Arctic Ocean, and thus afford them a free passage.
But he saw no chance, and no change. They were still a hundred miles at least from the sea, whose blue waves, sparkling in the sunshine, looked so tantalising through the telescope.
The sea-gulls and birds of every sort used to come round the ship now daily, to pick up refuse and crumbs that had been thrown on board. They became indeed marvellously tame. Now, strange to say, many of these were birds of Britain, and like all Britons, birds of passage as well. They would return to their homes on the rocks around England and Bonnie Scotland.
I was going to say happy homes, but drew rein in time, for, alas! they are not always happy, owing to the perpetual murder that goes on around our shores, by which, at the hands of shop-boys and cads with guns, the beautiful birds are killed and maimed without mercy.
“I think,” said Barclay Stuart one morning, “that Davie and I have devised a means of communicating with the outer world which may result in our salvation.”