"Are there any in Sargasso Sea?" asked Billy, who seemed fascinated by the subject.
"I should say there are," put in Bluewater Bill, "and they grow there as big as elephants to a rabbit compared to this fellow. I don't doubt that some of them has lived there for hundreds of years, just like turtles. You see it's a fine place for feeding in, among all that seaweed, and when a ship gets in there and some poor chap goes crazy and jumps overboard, why, then they have an extra nice morsel to make 'em get fat and live long."
"Well, that's a nice prospect," said Billy. "I don't know but what I should prefer their room to their company."
"Same here," chorused the others.
Hour by hour now the seaweed began to get thicker. At first spread in isolated clumps and drifting prettily on the waves, it now became so dense as to be a menace.
"We'll have to turn back," announced Frank, "we can't afford to risk snarling up the propeller."
Accordingly the Bolo's head was put about and she was headed westward again. When the seaweed became so thin as to not offer any serious impediment to navigation, the Bolo's heavy anchor was dropped. Luckily she carried six hundred feet of one inch manila, but even this was hardly enough for the depth of water and had to be eked out with every bit of chain and cable that could be spared. Fortunately under the circumstances the Bolo carried a capstan which could be thrown into a gear with the engine, otherwise it would have been impossible for her to anchor in that depth of water, as her crew could never have got up the mud-hook by hand.
The weather promised to be clear, and a consultation of the barometer showed the instrument to be absolutely steady. After breakfast the next day, therefore, the work of erecting the Golden Eagle at sea was begun. First the pontoons were lowered over the side and the boys, working from the Bolo's dory, connected them by the rigid vanadium steel framework provided for that purpose, and which fitted into brackets bolted to the sides of the tubes themselves. When connected up they formed a sort of catamaran with a space of about twenty-five feet intervening between them. The chassis of the Golden Eagle, which was in sections, was then erected on a framework previously built and which was attached to the floating pontoons. This work occupied the greater part of two days, and impatient as Frank was to be off, he would not allow it to be slighted.
[Illustration: Erecting the Golden Eagle on the pontoons.]
The wing-supporting framework rising from the chassis next engaged the young workmen's attention, each part being screwed to the other and fixed in place with nuts locked by a spring devised for the purpose by Frank. This was necessary, as the incessant jarring of an aeroplane's powerful engines will work loose the most tightly screwed on nut if it is not locked, and, of course, the working loose of even a minor part on an air craft is a serious proposition indeed. The vanadium steel quadrangle being in place, the next task was to adjust the wide stretching wing-frames of the big plane. This was a tough job, but the boys managed to overcome the tendency of the floating craft to capsize under the uneven burden by placing a raft made of boards from the cabin floor of the Bolo under each wing tip as it was screwed in place.