The second mate stood at the ladder and touched his cap as I descended. He evidently had a premonition of coming trouble, and was so far guilty of a breach of discipline as to suggest that he be allowed to accompany me upon my hazardous journey. I replied with a frown and a shake of the head.
Without any suggestion from the owner of the launch, I took my seat at the tiller, while Gray looked after the engine. Despite the rigid discipline maintained aboard the Caribas, the entire ship’s company, except those actually engaged in scrubbing the deck, assembled at the bulwarks to watch our departure. I confess that I was rather pleased than annoyed at this.
It touched my vanity, as I suppose it would have awakened that feeling in any man.
We got under headway about 9 o’clock and made for the first broad canal we discovered. While at the masthead I had attempted to follow this channel with my glass, just as I might have traced the sinuous windings of a sluggish stream through a grassy meadow; but I had not been able to outline its course beyond a few miles, because of the height of the brushwood, covered with its parasitic growth of plants. We steamed along gayly under full headway for about an hour, doing about eight miles, I should say, because of our heavy load, and although the channel we navigated varied greatly in width at places, it was broad enough at all points to have admitted the Caribas. The average width of the passage was about that of the Grand Canal at Venice, and though its convolutions were more numerous, we had no trouble in following the main channel.
As we penetrated farther and farther into this great mass of floating herbage, I was particularly struck with the strange mental effect produced upon me by the rise and fall of the ocean swell underneath the overlying mass. For the first time in my life I felt a sense of dizziness and seasickness. To the eye it was much the same as if in the midst of a far-reaching prairie one should find the land heaving and sinking in long undulations.
CHAPTER III.
I AM BETRAYED.
All this time I had kept close to my right hand a repeating rifle; but under the pretext of wishing to shoot some wild fowl, my companion gained possession of it and moved off to the bow of the boat. I thought nothing of this act for some time, but I observed that Gray always left the gun forward when he came amidships to attend to the engine.
When, at the end of three hours, we had come within plain sight of the great cluster of swaying hulks, and had reached a point where many small canals radiated from a central pool, my companion, the artist, promptly indicated the channel that I was to take and showed a familiarity with the landmarks that actually startled me. He would say: “Steer for that redwood tree on the port bow; bear ’round by that logwood trunk; keep wide out, and avoid the wire grass on the right just ahead; take care here, there’s a sunken tree; put the helm hard down or we won’t round this corner,” and many other expressions indicating previous knowledge of the place.
I was on the point of asking him several times whether he knew or simply divined the obstructions, but I was so busy watching his movements, which now had aroused my suspicions, that I did not scrutinize the prospect ahead. For that reason we had approached within a short distance of the community of floating wrecks before I gave it careful survey.