So little Jacob looked and looked for a long time, but he didn't know what he was looking for, and that makes a great difference about seeing a thing.
"I don't see anything," said he. "What is it, Sol—a ship!"
"No, oh no," answered little Sol. "It's on the water—on the surface. We've almost got to one of 'em."
So little Jacob looked again, and he saw what looked, at first, like a calm streak on the water. There seemed to be little sticks sticking up out of the calm streak. Then he saw that it looked like a narrow island, except that it went up and down with the waves. Sometimes he saw one part of it, and then he saw another part. And the island was all covered with water, and the water near it was calm, and it was a yellowish brown, like seaweed. In a minute or two the Industry was ploughing through it, and he could see that it was a great mass of floating seaweed that gave way, before the ship, like water, and the little sticks that he had seen, sticking up, were the stems. A little way ahead there was another of the floating islands; and another and another, until the surface of the sea seemed covered with them. They were really fifteen or twenty fathoms apart; but, from a distance, it didn't look as if they were.
"Why, Sol," said little Jacob, in surprise, "it doesn't stop the ship at all. I should think it would. What is it?"
"Well," answered little Sol. "I asked one of the men, and he laughed and said it was nothing but seaweed—that the ship would make nothing of it. I was afraid we were running aground. And the man said that the rows—it gets in windrows, like hay that's being raked up—he said that the windrows were broken up a good deal by the storm; that he's often seen 'em stretching as far as the eye could see, and a good deal thicker than these are."
Little Jacob laughed. "What are you laughing at?" asked little Sol, looking up.
"'As far as the eye could see,'" said little Jacob.
"Well," said little Sol, "that's just what he said, anyway."