16 JUNGLE PEACE 



For a few minutes there is wild excitement. 

 My audience dances and shouts with enthusiasm 

 from the upper rails, members of the crew 

 appear arid help me pursue agile crabs and flop- 

 ping fish about the deck. Even the surly old 

 mate roars down news of another batch of weed 

 ahead, and I curb my curiosity and again mount 

 my precarious roost. 



In the course of several days I acquire a 

 wonderful sunburn, considerable accuracy in 

 flinging my octodont, and finally a series of 

 tumblers of very interesting specimens, which 

 furnish me with many new facts, and my fellow 

 passengers with the means to kill much of that 

 embarrassing concomitant of ocean voyages- 

 time. 



An amazing amount of fiction and nonsense 

 has been written about the sargasso weed, but 

 the truth is actually more unbelievable. Though 

 we see it in such immense patches, and although 

 for days the ocean may be flecked with the 

 scattered heads of the weed, yet it is no more 

 at home in mid-ocean than the falling leaves in 

 autumn may claim as their place of abode, 

 the breeze which whirls them about, or the moss 

 upon which at last they come to rest. Along 



