CHAPTER VII
TRAPPED
There was something so sinister in this silent closing of all avenue of retreat that for a moment Madden was dismayed, then he struck out toward the schooner with a certain bold weariness.
As an experiment he threw his buoy ahead of him by a snap of wrist and forearm, then tried to swim to it. The long yielding growth slid under and around him, but it took all the dash out of his stroke. He pawed his way forward with his arms, legs stretched out idle. A thousand wet sticky fingers dragged their length over his body, retarding, clogging, holding him. It left him stranded like a bug in gelatine. His flesh crawled at this slimy swimming, he shrank from it, and it sapped his heart and strength.
The only stroke possible was the overarm, and his hands fell with a gummy plop instead of the heartsome splash of open water. By the time he reached his buoy and threw it again, he regretted miserably that he had not swum the clean water route if it were five miles farther.
By the time he had thrown his buoy twice, he could hardly advance it a yard beyond his reach; finally it simply slushed along the surface. The sun seemed much hotter in this congestion than in the open sea.
Behind him came his two men in a queer snakelike procession of plopping buoys and wriggling bodies. Ahead of them the seaweed stretched, apparently all the way to the schooner. As they worked their way through the scum of many seas, the noon sun broiled their backs into thin water blisters, and stewed saline odors out of the clammy life about them.
Once Madden's hand struck a yellowish line of algae and a score or two of little jelly-like insects writhed into the grass below. One of these things touched the swimmer's arm and gave the boy a stinging sensation. He knocked it off desperately and pushed on.
Presently his shoulder muscles ached and burned so keenly, he could no longer continue the overarm. Then he took the buoy in both hands, held it straight out, thrust it edge down into the oozy substance, used it as a kind of anchor and drew it to him. At first this technique seemed to advance him somewhat, but presently he appeared merely to disturb the viscous mass without going forward. He grew acutely discouraged; his back, shoulders, cramped, ached and burned. The brilliantly lighted schooner seemed to regress as he progressed. The sun was like an auger boring into the back of his head. His mind began to wander again, and a sudden fear came on him lest he should go insane out in this horrible slime.
A fiery burning on his right foot jerked him back out of his half delirium, and he knew that an insect of the same kind he had seen a few minutes before had stung him. He kicked it off convulsively, but the thrust of his foot brought a wash of new stings.
All of a sudden, his patience, endurance, pluck seemed to give out. This new torture made him as unreasonably frantic as a baby. He kicked furiously. He scraped the toe nails of one foot against the flesh of the other leg. As he did so the animalculae settled on the abraded skin, like streaks of melted steel. The boy doubled up, like a grub worm covered with ants, fighting, scraping, twisting, squirming. He writhed, beat, scratched, this great hundred and sixty pound animal fighting an enemy that would weigh about twenty to the gram.
He heard a shout from Caradoc, a question from Greer, then his insane struggles carried him under the surface of the clammy seaweed. The seaweed, infested with stinging insects, closed over his form like a wave of fire.
Only lack of breath stopped Leonard's mad struggles. Bursting lungs and the mere necessity to live at last made him disregard the attacks of these wasps of the Sargasso. He struck out for the surface again like a diver, reaching up arms, spreading legs with a stroke and a kick. But the gelatinous stuff simply quivered with his struggles and held him firm. He stuck like a fly in mucilage.
The sliminess of the element utterly destroyed the mechanics of swimming. A forward stroke in pure water displaces portions of the water and the return stroke sends the body forward. In this mass the forward stroke merely compressed the weed in front of the arm, and left a cavity through which the return stroke received no power.
Madden dared not open his eyes. In fiery blackness he kicked and struck in useless froglike movements. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer in his ears. Streaks of red fire played against the blackness of his eyelids. He knew that in a few more seconds his straining lungs would gulp in the stinging ooze, he knew his will could not prevent his drawing in some sort of breath.
He clung desperately to the control of his diaphragm, as a falling man clings to a ledge of rock. His great chest muscles gave convulsive jerks. His control was going, going.
Suddenly a human hand gripped his wrist. He was jerked upwards, perhaps a foot. A moment later he was gulping in great lungfuls of air.
He had been suffocating ten or twelve inches beneath that repulsive slime, as securely captured as if he had been a thousand feet deep.
It had taken Greer and Smith that length of time to wriggle a yard or two and fish him out.
“Steady! Steady!” said Caradoc in a lifeless voice. “Steady there, Madden! Hold him tightly, Greer!”
Greer made some sort of groaning reply, when Caradoc snarled, “Let 'em sting, you scullion! What if they do kill you! Is there any better way to die?”
Madden felt a great pushing and jostling at his body. He raked the seaweed from his face and opened his eyes. The Englishman was shoving fiercely at the American's shoulder, Greer, ahead, pulling at an elbow. The burning insects had swarmed on both his rescuers. Caradoc's sun-baked face had a yellowish, bloodless hue, his lean jaws clenched under his choppy white mustache. In the midst of his burning pain he held his legs rigid, pushed Leonard with one hand and pawed furiously through the viscid tangle with the other.
The constancy of his companions braced Madden like a dash of ice water. His own weakness had brought about this dangerous plight. The American caught up his buoy, and between great gasps of the blessed air, rapped out that he could go by himself, and began making his own way forward.
So the three worked themselves over the oozy bed of fire. The Englishman's arms shot into the slime with the regularity of pistons. He appeared to make no haste, yet he made remarkable speed. Only his distended nostrils, pain-tightened mouth, grim eyes, showed that he was in torture.
Even amid his own suffering Leonard felt a thrill of admiration for Smith's endurance and working power. He even found time to wonder dimly if Smith's people, that rich, cold, proud family, if they could see their remittance man now, would not stoop to claim him as a kinsman.
All at once the poignant and disgusting attack of the insects ceased. A flood of ecstatic relief swept over the adventurers. Without a word, all three quit squirming, caught their floats under their armpits and swung down in a limp luxurious rest.
Then they saw a marvelous thing had happened. The same slow swirl of the Sargasso current that had closed up their avenue on the west side, had opened another on the east. Their way toward the schooner lay unobstructed.
The clean delightful seawater soothed the pain of their stinging flesh.
“We'll be there in fifteen minutes,” murmured Leonard weakly.
“When you're ready, say so,” said Greer with a frown still lingering on his heavy face.
At that moment Madden heard a groan from Caradoc.
“What's the matter?” aspirated the American.
“Nothing—weak—don't bother.” He closed his eyes, blew out his breath like a sick man. His face was bloodlessly sallow, and Madden could see his grip slipping on the canvas buoy.
“You're all in!” gasped Madden in exhausted staccato, “I knew you oughtn't to—aren't you about to faint again?”
The Englishman shook his head slightly. “Don't worry,” he murmured, then his eyes closed, his hands slipped loose.
With brusque directness, Madden caught the shock of tawny hair, jammed Caradoc's chin against the buoy and held him tight with little exertion for himself. Smith swung out as awkwardly as a turkey on a chopping block. The water was level with his lips, but his nose did not go under.
“Petered at last,” grunted Madden, staring at the corpselike face in dull speculation. “How in the world are we going to get him out of here?”
“I guess we can tow him out, sir,” growled Greer with dull indifference. “Mighty puny chap—always flopping over when he's in a tight place.”
“Come here, stick his arms through our buoys, put his own under his head!”
The plan was quickly carried out and Smith's unconscious form was placed beyond immediate danger.
The two youths took up their long swim once more. As they moved down the opening, they could see what slow progress they were making. Presently Madden explained in a low whispering tone:
“His heart's bad… can't stand much… poisoned with alcohol.”
Another pause filled with slow weary swimming, then Greer said:
“Said I was no gentleman… didn't know a French word… I keep sober.”
Madden made no defense to this reflection on the unconscious Englishman, but after a while he said:
“We ought to overlook lots in him, Greer—unfortunate fellow… there's good in him, Greer… bad too.”
“I've got no call to please you,” growled the sailor with astonishing frankness.
“Then why did you come with us?” inquired Madden amazed.
“Wanted to see the schooner.”
“And what have I done to you?”
“Called me a thief!” the sailor elevated his dull tone. “After I telegraphed ye about th' men… fought for ye… called me a thief!”
“Was that you tapping on the dock?”
Greer nodded resentfully. “And ye insulted me for it.”
“I'm sorry… I was almost wild that night. I'll apologize… before the crew.”
“I don't care nothing about that dull English crew.” This strange fellow's tone carried in it an illiterate man's undying resentment.
“Since you feel that way,” panted Madden at last, “I think I ought to tell you—he took the medicine chest,” Leonard nodded at the finely carved motionless face that lay on the float before them.
“Him!” gasped Greer.
Leonard nodded. “He wanted the alcohol in it.”
“And you call him a gentleman?”
Leonard nodded again. “Somehow I still call him a gentleman. He's hurt, sick, bruised, but he's a gentleman.”
“Well I don't!”
At that moment, the buoy under Caradoc's head bumped into a wooden wall and upset their swimming arrangements.
They were under the overhang of the mysterious schooner.