"I'm going to ask your father about it," said little Jacob. "He'll know all about it. He always knows." And he got up, carefully, and made his way inboard; then he ran aft, to look for Captain Solomon.
He found Captain Solomon on the quarter deck, leaning against the part of the cabin that stuck up through the deck. He was half sitting on it and looking out at the rows of seaweed that they passed. So little Jacob asked him.
"Yes, Jacob," answered Captain Solomon, "it's just seaweed, nothing but seaweed. We're just on the edge of the Sargasso Sea, and that means nothing but Seaweed Sea. The weed gets in long rows, just as you see it now, only the rows are apt to be longer and not so broken up. It's the wind that does it, and the ocean currents. It's my belief that the wind is the cause of the currents, too. I've seen acres of this weed packed so tight together that it looked as if we were sailing on my south meadow just at haying time. I don't see that south meadow at haying time very often, now, but I shall see it, please God, pretty soon."
"Well," said little Jacob, "I should think that it would get all tangled up so that it would stop the ship."
"My south meadow?" asked Captain Solomon. He was thinking of haying, and he had forgotten the Seaweed Sea.
Little Jacob laughed. "No, sir," he answered. "The seaweed. Why doesn't it get all tangled like ropes, so that it stops the ship?"
"The plants aren't long enough," said Captain Solomon. "Come, we'll get some of it for you."
"Oh!" cried little Jacob. "Will you? Thank you, sir."
And Captain Solomon told two of the sailors to come and to bring a big bucket. The bucket had a long rope fastened across, and the end was long enough to reach from the water up to the deck of the Industry. They use buckets like that to dip up the salt water; and, when the ship is going the sailors have to be very careful and very quick or they will lose the bucket, it pulls so hard.
So one sailor dipped the bucket just as they were passing over one of the rows of seaweed; and the other sailor took hold of the rope, too, as soon as he had dipped the bucket, and they pulled it up and set it on deck. Captain Solomon stooped and took up a plant. There were two plants in the bucket. Little Sol had come when he saw the sailors with the bucket.