No doubt it was only because the hiss of the escaping steam startled him; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward and seated himself in the very bows of the boat--a little black figure-head--and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though he were the pilot charged with the duty of setting our vessel's course. He had to give place to me in a moment--when I went to the bows to begin my sawing through the weed--but I was cheered by his planting himself that way pointing our course with his nose for me: and again I took his bit of freakishness for a good sign. XXXVIII HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED What I did on that first day of my voyage was what I did on every succeeding day during so long a time that it seemed to me the end of it never would come. When my craft fairly was started, with the fire well fed and a light enough weight on the safety-valve to guard against any sudden chance rise in the steam pressure, I went forward to the bows with the compass and set myself to my sawing. The wheel being lashed with the rudder amidships, all the steering was managed from the bows--any deviation from the straight line westward being corrected by my taking the saw out from the guide-bars and cutting to the right or to the left with it until I had the boat's nose pointing again the right way. But there was not often need for cutting of this sort. Held by the guide-bars, the saw cut a straight path for the boat to follow; while, conversely, the boat held the saw true. And so, for the most part, I had only to stand like a machine there--endlessly hauling the saw up and endlessly thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffed and snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound of the weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each side of me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat's sides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness--for anything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw I never came across; and from time to time I had to stop my engine--which I managed, and also the starting of it, by means of a pair of lines brought forward into the bows from the lever-bar--while I attended to feeding the fire.