concerning our approximate position as any of the chaps who had
never seen salt water before they viewed it from the bad eminence
of the CACHALOT's deck. Of course, it was evident that we were
bound eastward, but whether to the Indian seas or to the South
Pacific, none knew but the skipper, and perhaps the mate. I say
"perhaps" advisedly. In any well-regulated merchant ship there
is an invariable routine of observations performed by both
captain and chief officer, except in very big vessels, where the
second mate is appointed navigating officer. The two men work
out their reckoning independently of each other, and compare the
result, so that an excellent check upon the accuracy of the
positions found is thereby afforded. Here, however, there might
not have been, as far as appearances went, a navigator in the
ship except the captain, if it be not a misuse of terms to call
him a navigator. If the test be ability to take a ship round the
world, poking into every undescribed, out-of-the-way corner you
can think of, and return home again without damage to the ship of
any kind except by the unavoidable perils of the sea, then
doubtless he WAS a navigator, and a ripe, good one. But anything
cruder than the "rule-of-thumb" way in which he found his
positions, or more out of date than his "hog-yoke," or quadrant,
I have never seen. I suppose we carried a chronometer, though I
never saw it or heard the cry of "stop," which usually
accompanies a.m. or p.m. "sights" taken for longitude. He used
sometimes to make a deliberate sort of haste below after taking a
sight, when he may have been looking at a chronometer perhaps.
What I do know about his procedure is, that he always used a very
rough method of equal altitudes, which would make a mathematician
stare and gasp; that his nautical almanac was a ten-cent one
published by some speculative optician is New York; that he never