The Pinta and the Nina stood out with a strange,
enchanted look, as ships crossing a plain more vast than the
plain of Andalusia. Still that floating weed thickened. The
crowned woman at our prow pushed swathes of it to either
side. Our mariners hung over rail, talking, talking. "What
is it--and where will it end? Mayhap presently we can
not plough it!"
I was again and again to admire how for forty years
he had stored sea-knowledge. It was not only what those
gray eyes had seen, or those rather large, well molded ears
had heard, or that powerful and nervous hand had touched.
But he knew how to take, right and left, knowledge that
others gathered, as he knew that others took and would
take what he gathered. He knew that knowledge flows.
Now he stood and told that no less a man than Aristotle
had recorded such a happening as this. Certain ships of
Gades--that is our Cadiz--driven by a great wind far
into River-Ocean, met these weeds or others like them,
distant parents of these. They were like floating islands
forever changing shape, and those old ships sailed among
them for a while. They thought they must have broken
from sea floor and risen to surface, and currents brought
other masses from land. Tunny fish were caught among
them.
And that very moment, as the endless possibilities of
things would have it, one, leaning on the rail, cried out
that there were tunnies.
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