st securely; yet on the instant we
had reason to wish that we had been less successful; for the creature,
feeling the tug of our pull upon it, tossed the weed in all directions,
and thus we had full sight of it, and discovered it to be so great a crab
as is scarce conceivable--a very monster. And further, it was apparent to
us that the brute had no fear of us, nor intention to escape; but rather
made to come at us; whereat the bo'sun, perceiving our danger, cut the
line, and bade us put weight upon the oars, and so in a moment we were in
safety, and very determined to have no more meddlings with such
creatures.

Presently, the night came upon us, and, the wind remaining low, there
was everywhere about us a great stillness, most solemn after the
continuous roaring of the storm which had beset us in the previous days.
Yet now and again a little wind would rise and blow across the sea, and
where it met the weed, there would come a low, damp rustling, so that I
could hear the passage of it for no little time after the calm had come
once more all about us.

Now it is a strange thing that I, who had slept amid the noise of the
past days, should find sleeplessness amid so much calm; yet so it was,
and presently I took the steering oar, proposing that the rest should
sleep, and to this the bo'sun agreed, first warning me, however, most
particularly to have care that I kept the boat off the weed (for we had
still a little way on us), and, further, to call him should anything
unforeseen occur. And after that, almost immediately he fell asleep, as
indeed did the most of the men.

From the time that relieved the bo'sun, until midnight, I sat upon the
gunnel of the boat, with the steering oar under my arm, and watched and
listened, most full of a sense of the strangeness of the seas into
which we had come. It is true that I had heard tell of seas choked up
with weed--seas that were full of stagnation, having no tides; but I
had not thought to come upon such an one in my wanderings; having,
indeed, set down such tales as being bred of imagination, and without
reality in fact.

Then, a little before the dawn, and when the sea was yet full of
darkness, I was greatly startled to hear a prodigious splash amid the
weed, mayhaps at a distance of some hundred yards from the boat. Then,
as I stood full of alertness, and knowing not what the next moment
might bring forth, there came to me across the immense waste of weed, a
long, mournfu