"
"Shall we try to take our buoys through, sir?" inquired Greer.
"We'll start with them."
"Don't try to use your legs in the weed," warned Caradoc. "Don't kick;
you'll get tangled."
"We'll experiment and work through the best way we can. If it turns out
too bad, we can turn back, that's one consolation."
Just then, under Madden's astonished eyes, a queer thing happened. The
long open tongue of the sea which they had just entered, silently closed
up. It seemed to close very slowly, and yet it was accomplished in an
amazingly brief time. Some dull movement in the Sargasso current had
blocked the adventurers with sinister precision. Madden felt the hot
slimy mass close softly around him.
It was now as easy to go forward as to return.
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.
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