“Indeed, sir, I can’t say much for its appearance. It looks more like a parcel of cauliflowers run to seed than anything else, sir!”
“Yes, that’s not a bad simile of yours, my lad,” he replied, moving nearer to the side and sending his keen sailorly glance alow and aloft, examining our old barquey to see how she fared after the storm. “If I can remember rightly, I think one of our best naturalists has given a similar description of it. Yes, that’s the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or fucus natans, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo. A rum sort of tackle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir,” said I, for I had never had the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the uncanny looking gulf-weed. “Does it grow in the sea, sir? It looks so fresh and green.”
“Well, that depends how you take it, my lad,” returned the skipper rather absently, his attention being fixed on something forward, about which he evidently could not quite make up his mind, as there was a slight puzzled expression on his face. “You see, it is all through those long-winded chaps who won’t be content with what the Creator gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God’s own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle, Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of years—I’d be sorry to say how many—without their precious help! Now these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to us.”
“How strange, sir,” said I. “Just like an aquarium plant. It is strange!”
“It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!”
“That is not likely, then,” I observed in reply to this—“I mean, sir, the fact of its growing up from the bottom of the sea.”
“Certainly not, my boy. Another wise man, of the same kidney as the long-winded chap of the theory I’ve just explained, says that the gulf-weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and promontories of the Florida coast and that it is torn thence by the action of the great Atlantic current that bears it many miles from its home; though, strangely enough, I have never seen any gulf-weed growing on rocks in the Gulf of Florida or in any of the adjacent seas, nor has any one else to my knowledge!”
“Then you do not believe it grows to anything at all, do you, sir?”
“No, I don’t. My opinion is that it is a surface plant of old Neptune’s rearing and that the warm water of the Gulf Stream breeds it and nourishes it, for at certain times it seems partly withered, and this could not be due to accident. The weed, I believe, is a sailor, like you and I, my lad, and lives and has its being on the sea, no matter what your longshore naturalists, who don’t know much about it from personal observation, may say to the contrary. Hullo! though, my boy, look forrad there! Where has our spar anchor gone? I thought I noticed something and could not make out at first what it was. Look, youngster, and see whether you can see it!”