the
consequences which had sprung from my fight with Van Luck and his
subsequent part in the mutiny were not such as we cared to contemplate.
If judges could see those whom they sentence after they have endured
their punishment they would pause before passing fresh sentences upon
wrongdoers, however guilty.

I could see that Van Luck attributed to me all his misfortunes, for he
watched me closely, but when I spoke to him he shifted his gaze
uneasily, as though afraid to look me in the face. I can honestly say I
felt nothing but pity for him, and I made allowance for his animosity
toward me when I remembered his cruel punishment.

"Of a truth, Peter," said Hartog to me one evening when we sat together
in the cabin, "I had better have shot Van Luck than let him live to
become what he is. Never again will I send a man adrift upon such a
voyage, though by all the rules of the sea the mutinous dog deserved
what he got for his treachery. It was not his fault that you and I were
not marooned instead of him."

I did not answer, but had I then known the malice in Van, Luck toward
me, of which I shall hereafter tell, the compassion which I felt for
him would have been lessened.

CHAPTER XV

THE SEAWEED SEA

Of all the adventures through which we had passed, perhaps there was
none so dangerous as that which now befell us. We had shaped our course
to the east, on the look-out for a new group of islands, among which
Hartog expected to find the Island of Gems, when, one morning, we
observed the horizon to have assumed a black look as though a storm was
brewing, but on nearing this phenomenon, we found it to consist of an
immense growth of seaweed floating upon the ocean, and extending as far
as the eye could reach.

The course we were steering would have carried us into the midst of the
weed, so we hauled our wind, and coasted along it to the south, hoping
either to find an opening through which we might pass, or to come to
the end of the floating mass, but the farther we proceeded the thicker
the weed became, while other masses now appeared to larboard, so that
we feared we might be enmeshed in such a manner that we would find it
impossible to extricate ourselves. I had read of a sea covered by a
weed which held ships entangled as in a net, and I feared that this was
the danger into which fate had now led us. Portions of the kelp
detached from the main mass, which floated alongside the ship, proved
it to be a growth