noon
And so I was glad when he gave me a breathing spell , and the chance to think things over quietly , by telling me that he would not hurry me for answer and that I could take a day or two -- or a week or two if I wanted it -- in which to make up my mind . For the rest of that day , and for the two days following , Captain Luke did not in any way refer to his offer ; and as he showed himself more than ever friendly , and talked away to me in his usual entertaining fashion , my rage and fright began to go off a little -- though at bottom , of course , there was no change in my opinions , nor any doubt as to my giving him a point-blank refusal when the issue should be squarely raised . All this time the brig was bowling along down the trades ; and on the third morning after I had the captain 's offer -- we being then close upon the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude -- Bowers called my attention to the gulf-weed floating about us , and told me that we were fairly on the outer edge of the Sargasso Sea . We should not get into any thicker part of it , he said , as we should bear up to clear it ; and so we actually did , hauling away a good deal to the eastward when the brig 's course was set that day at noon . But my interest in the matter had been so checked -- all my thought being given to finding some way out of the pickle in which I found myself -- that I paid little attention to the patches of yellow weed on the water around us or to the bits of wreckage that we saw now and then ; and when Bowers , keeping on with his talk , fell to chaffing me about my desire to make a voyage of discovery into the thick part of this floating mystery I did not rise to his joking , nor did I make him much of a reply . Indeed , I was in rather a low way that day ; which was due in part to my not being able , for all my thinking , to see any sort of a clear course before me ; and in part to the fact that the weather was thickening and that my spirits were dulled a good deal by what we call the heaviness of the air . All around the horizon steel-gray clouds were rising , and a soft sort of a haze hung about us and took the life out of the sunshine , and the wind fell away until there was almost nothing of it , and that little fitful -- while with the dying out of it the sea began to stir slowly with a long oily swell .