Page:Cruise of the Dry Dock.djvu/217

 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