Their speech chiefly concerned me. Little by little I became cognizant of the fact that I had been lured away from my ship and into the hands of this strange people by this pretended artist emissary of the Sargassons. What the purpose of this kidnapping was did not at once appear. I could not comprehend of what possible service I could be to this community. The few valuables that I carried about my person, such as the Winchester gun, my watch and diamond pin, could have little value in their hands, because they had no occasions on which to display articles of jewelry. I soon discovered that my companion, the supposed artist, was well known throughout the community. He was hailed in a dozen different tongues from as many different vessels, and always in a respectful and familiar tone.
During all this time I had remained motionless at the stern of the launch, deliberating upon some plan by which I could get rid of my companion, and regain possession of the little craft, in which, by some miraculous means, I hoped to be able to return to my ship. The break-down of the machinery had, however, cut off that possibility. Capture seemed inevitable, although I fully realized that, had I possession of my Winchester gun, with the belt full of cartridges that I still retained about my waist, I could hold at bay the entire Sargasson nation. I reasoned at the time, and, as I afterwards ascertained, correctly, that powder was scarce among the Sargassons.
My first impulse had been to shoot my treacherous companion with the revolver I carried in my hip pocket. But I discovered that it did not contain a single loaded cartridge, and the recognition of that fact by my guard, who, from the bow of the boat, constantly kept me under cover with my own gun, increased his confidence and caused him to jeer at me. I therefore made the best of a bad situation and surrendered. I took one precaution, however, that was to secretly loosen the belt of cartridges from my waist and drop it into the sea.
A line made of twisted sea grass was finally thrown to Gray from one of the largest vessels, and we were soon drawn alongside. This hulk stood fully twenty-five feet out of water, and was imbedded in a thoroughly compact mass of floating verdure. As the boat was made fast to a narrow strip of sod and interlaced twigs that separated the vessel from the open water, my companion sprang out lightly upon a tree trunk, and, addressing me familiarly, said:
“We land here, captain.”
There was nothing for me to do but to comply with his suggestion, and, making my way forward to the landing place, I sprang out of the boat as gayly as I could be expected to do under the circumstances. No sooner had my feet touched the mass of floating sod than I was made acquainted with a new and startling horror. I found the mass of tangled herbage alive with crawling insects, upon which large serpents, that abounded in great numbers, fed.
The trees that form a large portion of this garbage heap of the Atlantic are brought down from the upper Amazon during the tremendous freshets that prevail under the equator and are carried through from the Caribbean Sea and the gulf to the midocean swirl, where they reach their final haven. Their track throughout is along the current of the Gulf Stream, whose warm waters protect the animal life that happens to be upon the trees at the time they are carried out to sea. I afterwards learned that at one time marmosets from Brazil existed in considerable numbers in Sargasso, but the large serpents finally had exterminated them. I always had had a horror of snakes and lizards, and I therefore made haste to cross the quivering bog-holes leading directly to the water below.
My captor followed, encouraging me and directing me where to step in order to avoid mishaps. For the reason I have named, I gladly sprang up the ladder that had been constructed on the side of the ship as soon as I reached it.
At the ship’s side, as I emerged above it, stood a man of unusually strange appearance. As I soon came to know him, he was the Kantoon of the particular communal family having its habitation on that ship. He was 60 years of age, with a grizzly gray beard, clipped or singed to an almost uniform length of three inches, that covered his face. His dress was made of what I afterwards discovered to be sun-tanned porpoise skin. His cap was of dark-brown leather, that had apparently done duty as a cushion cover. But I experienced another surprise when, on stepping over the gunwale to the deck, I found that the commander of the craft stood up to his knees in a tub of water!
The old man received me with dignified but gruff courtesy. His manner favorably impressed me. I reflected that, likely as not, my companion was an eccentric fellow, who thought to perpetrate a practical joke on me by pretending that he had brought me to this ship under guard and by force, and causing me to believe that I would be shot if I disobeyed him. My companion spoke to the Kantoon in Portuguese, and, having introduced me as the captain of the steamship Caribas, added: