"We'll experiment and work through the best way we can. If it turns out too bad, we can turn back, that's one consolation."
Just then, under Madden's astonished eyes, a queer thing happened. The long open tongue of the sea which they had just entered, silently closed up. It seemed to close very slowly, and yet it was accomplished in an amazingly brief time. Some dull movement in the Sargasso current had blocked the adventurers with sinister precision. Madden felt the hot slimy mass close softly around him.
It was now as easy to go forward as to return.
CHAPTER VII
TRAPPED
There was something so sinister in this silent closing of all avenue of retreat that for a moment Madden was dismayed, then he struck out toward the schooner with a certain bold weariness.
As an experiment he threw his buoy ahead of him by a snap of wrist and forearm, then tried to swim to it. The long yielding growth slid under and around him, but it took all the dash out of his stroke. He pawed his way forward with his arms, legs stretched out idle. A thousand wet sticky fingers dragged their length over his body, retarding, clogging, holding him. It left him stranded like a bug in gelatine. His flesh crawled at this slimy swimming, he shrank from it, and it sapped his heart and strength.
The only stroke possible was the overarm, and his hands fell with a gummy plop instead of the heartsome splash of open water. By the time he reached his buoy and threw it again, he regretted miserably that he had not swum the clean water route if it were five miles farther.
By the time he had thrown his buoy twice, he could hardly advance it a yard beyond his reach; finally it simply slushed along the surface. The sun seemed much hotter in this congestion than in the open sea.