"You fellows that are able," Madden addressed the group, "get buckets and shovels and pile up that scattered coal. The exercise will make you feel better. When the sea is smoother, we'll rig a jury mast on the forward bridge for a signal."

A few of the men were still too sick, but most of the crowd shuffled off to work. Some of the laborers drew off their pea jackets as they went, for the murky day was filled with a rising humid warmth.

Coal piling was just getting under way in the heaving dock, when the door to Caradoc's cabin swung open and the Englishman stepped out.

A glance at the tall fellow told Madden how he fared. The narrow-set eyes were inflamed, the long bronze face had lost firmness and seemed inclined to sag in lines.

"Smith," called Madden friendlily, "you may help pile coal if you feel like it."

"I--that demijohn that you took last night," began the Briton nervously.

"Yes," Madden became serious.

"I want it, if you please."

Madden looked at the unstrung fellow. "Can't get it, Smith; you've had too much already."

"Can't get my own property?" demanded Caradoc, raising his voice so all the men could hear.

"No," snapped Madden, "you know sailors are not allowed to keep liquor in their dunnage."

"That's my demijohn and I'll----"

"I smashed it, and the pieces washed overboard long ago."

"Overboard!" cried the big fellow. He turned hot eyes seaward as if searching the waters, then for the first time noticed the fantastic ocean around him. He stared at it with a strange expression.

"What--what is that--where are we, Madden?" he asked with a catch in his breath.

The fellow's tremulous condition touched the American. "Tug broke away last night--we're adrift in the Sargasso."

A look of relief came over the long face, but he still gazed at the serpentine patternings. "I--I thought I was seeing--ugh, isn't it horrible!"

"You're unstrung, Caradoc; better go lie down," suggested Madden in considerate tones.

The mood of the Briton underwent a characteristic quick shift. "Me lie down?" he rasped. "I'll have my property. You're grabbing authority fast enough, but you'll learn Englishmen don't submit to impositions. Threw it overboard!" he laughed with sour incredulity. "Bet you have it in your cabin."

The men stopped work, gaping at the insubordination. Madden flushed under the implication. He stepped forward to smash the long insolent face and white mustache, but it was plain the Englishman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Madden caught himself, stood drawing short breaths through expanded nostrils. "Go to your bunk, Caradoc, and wait till you're sane," he ordered in fairly even tones, then turned abruptly, leaving the big fellow scowling and biting his choppy mustache.

The navvies turned back to their work, distinctly disappointed; they had expected a fight.

Within the next few days the crew dropped into the routine of derelict life. When the sky cleared and the sea flattened, it left the big dock amid breathless heat beneath a molten tropical sky.

As far as the eye could reach, the castaways saw no signs of life, not a sail, not a smoke, not a gull, not even the ripple of a wave; nothing but gaudy, motionless markings from one flat horizon to the other, dead traceries that swiftly became uninteresting, then monotonous, then disagreeable, then maddening in the aching eyes of the crew.

As much for the mental health of the men as anything else, Leonard worked them steadily. The day's work was divided into morning and evening watches, because during the midday the iron barge reached a temperature where labor was impossible. During the cooler watches, the men painted desperately to cover the black expanse of the dock with red in order to reflect part of the palpitating heat rays.

Through the idle noon periods, the crew lay about on gunny sacks under improvised awnings, with a man posted on the forward bridge as lookout.

The colorful mazes of the Sargasso were as irritating as flowered wall paper in a sickroom. Even Hogan's and Deschaillon's spirits sagged under the brilliant sweltering sameness. The navvies moved about half naked, and burned brown as nuts. The men fought over trifles. Caradoc became a raw mass of nerves. Once or twice Madden attempted to make things pleasanter for his former friend, but was repulsed rabidly.

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.

Madden pushed back his figures as Gaskin entered with a tray. The cook's face was scarlet and dripping.

"How much provisions have we on board, Gaskin?"

"Another month's supplies, sir--most of the stores was on the _Vulcan_, sir." Gaskin was dignified even in the heat.

Leonard turned to his map showing the drift of the dock; she was swinging farther and farther out of the trade routes every day. The probability of a rescue steadily decreased.

"In the future, Gaskin, cut rations one third."

The cook covertly swabbed his fat jowl. "Yes, sir--are we about to--" he checked his question. "Yes, sir," he agreed instead.

"Yes," said Leonard, answering the half question, "it's a very necessary precaution, and I hope this small reduction will be sufficient."

"Thankee very much, sir." Gaskin made a little bob and withdrew ceremoniously. Madden knew that Gaskin would continue to bob and thank as long as he had strength to do either.

Reducing the rations was not a sudden impulse with Madden. Ever since the first expectation of the _Vulcan's_ return had lost its immediate edge, the American knew that the hope of final rescue depended upon conserving their food supply.

The Sargasso Sea is a great oblong whorl in the Atlantic some four hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred long. Trade routes cut along its northern boundaries, and skirt its southwestern boundary. The dock might very well traverse two thousand miles without seeing a sail. At a rate of six miles a day, it would take eleven months to reach waters in which a rescue might be hoped.

In the meantime, the men grew more and more intractable and insubordinate. That day, when Madden had ordered Heck Mulcher to paint in a certain place, the navvy had grumbled out a "That's all very well for you, sir," and the rest was lost in a mutter.

The uncertain discipline of his men made Madden hesitate to cut the rations more decidedly. He felt that his command was questioned by the sailors.

As the boy gloomily dispatched his own supper, his ear caught a faint persistent tapping on the iron wall which faced the mate's cabin. At first he paid no attention to it, assuming it was the contraction of the iron in the cooling temperature of the oncoming night that made the popping. But as he ate it was at last borne in that these taps came in the irregular but orderly sequence of a telegraphic code.

With this thought in mind, he listened attentively. In his work as engineer he had had occasion to study up Morse in heliographing.

It proved one of the most senseless messages the boy had ever translated:

"Tiny arm, men plan mu." Then it was repeated, "Tiny arm, men plan mu."

This odd sentence was retapped four or five times and at last ceased. It was perhaps some beginner learning the code, but who in that crew could be working out the telegraphic code? Leonard thought over the men, one by one, but struck nobody who appealed to him as an incipient telegrapher.

The American continued thinking over the incident idly, the odd time the telegrapher had chosen to practice his art, the queer message he had rapped out, when suddenly the message whirled around in his mind, and he perceived he had begun listening in the middle of a very alarming sentence, and had been reading from one middle to the next. The message was: "Men plan mutiny--Arm!" "Men plan mutiny--Arm!"

Madden got to his feet with nervous quickness, and stood listening intently. The question of who sent the message now became of sharp importance. If the men planned mutiny, he could rely upon the telegrapher--perhaps.

There was still enough light in the steamy cabin to discern objects. The American began rummaging through table drawers, lockers and racks for some effective weapon, preferably a revolver.

At that moment he heard footsteps approaching his cabin door. An instant later the shutter swung open without the formality of a knock and two dark figures entered.