"I thought sailors could always sleep." This was Hetty's contribution to the conversation as she still studied her work.
"Then we may be three weeks going out," said Drew. "It seems like a long time."
"I was a hundred and twenty days on my last voyage--from Singapore," said Medbury.
"I am beginning to grasp the reason for the sailor's rapt, far-seeing look," said Drew. "It is not strange that he never loses it, with his constant study of invisible signs and meanings. But a hundred and twenty days! What changes may take place in that time!"
"We find changes enough," Medbury answered. "Sometimes I think we sailors are the only things that do not change, except to grow older and sadder. We always hope to find everything just as we left it, but we never do."
Hetty looked steadily seaward, and a fine flush came to her face; but Drew was struck with the philosophy of the situation.
"That surely ought to be true," he acquiesced--"that the sailor is the most unchanging of men. One should come back wiser in sea-lore, but solitude and the singleness of his purpose should keep him untouched by all the distractions that change other men. I've noticed in Blackwater the freshness of spirit, almost boyishness, of old men."
Hetty's face was turned forward, and now she leaped to her feet.
"What _is_ that, Tom?" she exclaimed. "We are running on a sand-bar!"
A hundred yards ahead of them stretched a great golden-brown field that looked like a salt-meadow in April. Above it wheeled a flock of sea-birds.
"Sargasso weed," he answered, and grinned. "It's always waltzing about in these latitudes."
The girl walked to the main-rigging, and, leaning across the sheer-pole, watched the yellow plain with wondering eyes. A moment later, as they plunged into it, she caught her breath; it seemed incredible to her that there should be no shock.
Instantly the sounds of the sea were hushed; there was only the soft hissing of the weed as it swept past the side of the brig.
"Come up to the forecastle-deck and see it pile up on the bow," Medbury said to the girl.
He leaned across the sheer-pole with her a moment in silence. The bell forward struck four sharp strokes; it was like a cry in the night. Then a sailor came lurching aft to relieve the man at the wheel.