The little purser unconsciously struck an attitude. “A good deal later, sometimes,” he qualified. “Derelicts have been known to float for three years in the Atlantic, and to travel for thousands of miles. Generally, however, in the North Atlantic, they either break up in a storm within a few months, or else they drift into the Sargasso Sea and stay there till they sink.” “The Sargasso Sea? Where is that? I suppose I used to know when I went to school, but I’ve forgotten.” Mr. Sprigg waved his hand toward the east and north. “Yonder,” he generalized vaguely. “We are on the western edge of it now. See the weed floating in the water there? Farther north and east it gets thicker until it collects into a solid mass that stretches five hundred miles in every direction. “Nobody knows just what it looks like in the middle, for nobody has ever been there; or, rather, nobody has ever been there and come back to tell about it. Old sailors say that there’s thousands of derelicts collected there.” “The Gulf Stream encircles the whole ocean in a mighty whirlpool, you know, and sooner or later everything floating in the North Atlantic is caught in it. They may be carried away up to the North Pole, but they’re bound to come south again with the icebergs and back into the main stream, and some day they get into the west-wind drift and are carried down the Canary current, until the north equatorial current catches them, and sweeps them into the sea over yonder.” “For four hundred years and more--ever since Columbus--derelicts must have been gathering there. Millions of them must have sunk, but thousands must have been washed into the center. Once there, they must float for a long time. There are storms there, of course, but they’re only wind-storms--there can’t be any waves; the weed is too thick.” “I guess there are ships still afloat there that were built hundreds of years ago. Maybe Columbus’s lost caravels are there; maybe people are imprisoned there! Gee! but it’s fascinating.” Miss Fairfax stared at the little man in amazement. He was the last person she would ever have suspected of imagination or romance; and here he was, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, declaiming away like one inspired. Most men can talk well on some one subject, and this subject was Mr. Sprigg’s own. For years he had been reading and talking and thinking about it. Miss Fairfax rose from her steamer-chair and looked around her, then paused, awestruck. Down in the southeast a mass of black clouds darkened the day as they spread. Puffs of wind ran before them, each carrying sheets of spray torn from the tops of the waves; one stronger than the rest dashed its burden into Miss Fairfax’s face with little stinging cuts. The cry of the stewards, “All passengers below!” was not needed to tell her that the deck was rapidly becoming no place for women. III