ce, ready to devour all hapless criminals who
should recklessly attempt to swim away from "durance vile."

Indeed, it was owing to the curiosity of a sea-lion that at this point
in its long voyage the bottle was saved from destruction. A storm had
recently swept the southern seas, and the bottle, making bad weather of
it in passing the Falklands, was unexpectedly driven on a lee-shore in
attempting to double a promontory. Whether promontories are more
capable of resisting the bottle than human beings, I know not; but
certain it is that the promontory arrested its progress. It began to
clink along the foot of the cliffs at the outermost point with alarming
violence; and there can be no reasonable doubt that it would have become
a miserable wreck there, if it had not chanced to clink right under the
nose of a sea-lion which was basking in the sunshine, and sound asleep
on a flat rock.

Opening its eyes and ears at the unwonted sound, the lion gazed
inquiringly at the bottle, and raised its shaggy front the better to
inspect it. Apparently the sight stimulated its curiosity, for, with a
roar and a gush of ardent spirit, it plunged into the sea and drove the
bottle far down into the deep.

Finding, apparently, that nothing came of this terrific onslaught, the
lion did not reappear. It sneaked away, no doubt, into some coral cave.
But the force of the push sent the bottle a few yards out to sea, and
so it doubled the promontory and continued its voyage.

Shortly after this, however, a check was put to its progress which
threatened to be permanent.

In a few places of the ocean there are pools of almost stagnant tracts,
of various sizes, which are a sort of eddies caused by the conflicting
currents. They are full of seaweed and other drift, which is shoved
into them by the currents, and are named Sargasso seas. Some of these
are hundreds of miles in extent, others are comparatively small.

They bothered the navigators of old, did those Sargasso seas,
uncommonly. They are permanent spots, which shift their position so
little with the very slight changes in the currents of the sea, that
they may be said to be always in the same place.

Columbus got into one of these Sargassos--the great Atlantic one that
lies between Africa and the West Indies,--and his men were alarmed lest
this strange weedy sea should turn out to be the end of the world!
Columbus was long detained in this region of stagnation and calm, and so