Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн

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The men indulge in a new sport to while away the time—they try to catch the fast-passing seaweed which lies in sponges and coils in the limpid sea. While Columbus took heart of grace because of the banks of seaweed his ship encountered, believing it a sign of the proximity of land, we on our Spanish ship making in prosaic fashion a bought-and-paid-for passage to the Indies, find the same seaweed a means of fun. Four or five Cubans and Spaniards take a bottle and a rope and a tangle of wire, and fish for seaweed from the bows. The weather-side gets quite a little crowd upon it, for the crew also take part in the joy of throwing out a bottle and wire to entangle floating green tresses of sea-maidens or big floating sponges of their toilets. Often the bottle flies through the air and often goes up the chorus of disappointment as it hits a wave instead of a bank of weeds. But the exultation is great when a tangle is caught and brought up on deck. It is very pretty and hairlike, and the little children press it between the pages of Ibañez' novels which form the only literature on board. That which heartened Columbus diverted us.