As he passed with his burden some of the men made clumsy
tangle-footed efforts to salute.
In the shade Leonard found a deck chair, perched himself on its arm so
as not to touch its hot canvas, and sat brooding glumly. He banished the
drunken uproar from his brain and began totting up his prospects for
escape from this foully beautiful sea. His mind jumped from topic to
topic in an exhausted fashion. He wondered whether or not Galton really
knew anything of marine engines? If the dock would be discovered by a
passing ship? If the tug's crew had really gone demented and leaped
overboard? If there were any connection between the fate of the
_Minnie B_ and the _Vulcan_?
It seemed to Madden that he had been in the heat and brilliant
garishness of the Sargasso for centuries. He wondered if the men would
become so starved that they would draw lots to see who should be killed
and eaten.
Anything, everything, was possible in this isolated sea. Its normal
happenings were unreasonable. It was a place of madness. He recalled the
words of the navvy on the London dock, "Everything is unreasonable at
sea." Certainly that was true of the vast stewing labyrinth of the
Sargasso. He had lived abnormally so long that it seemed strange to him
now to think that there were comfortable, well-ordered places on the
face of the earth.
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