Near sunset one day, the American was in the mate's cabin trying to work
out his daily reckoning. According to the lad's inexpert calculations,
the dock was drifting southeast at the rate of some six or seven miles
each day. The dock was a prisoner in that vast central swirl between the
North and South Atlantic, that was swinging in stagnating circles when
Columbus sailed for the new world; it lay exactly the same when the
Norsemen beat down the coasts of Europe; it would continue as long as
Africa, Europe, and the Americas deflected ocean currents to produce its
motion. Its vast flaring dial was the clock of the world, marking the
passing ages. In all that stretch of time the Sargasso must have
received strange prey, triremes, caravels, galleons, schooners, men o'
war, derelicts ancient and modern, but certainly never before had the
art of man placed such a colossal and extraordinary fabric within its
swing.
Some such thoughts as these passed through Madden's mind as he pursued
his reckoning through trigonometric tables. The light fell redder and
dimmer through the ports and he hurried to finish his work before
darkness required a lamp in the steamy cabin. A furnace-like breath,
laden with malodorous ship smells, drifted in upon him. Madden's thin
undershirt clung sweatily to the muscular ridges down his back and
moulded the graceful deltoid at the shoulder.
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