100 THE CRUISE OF TEE "CACEALOT." 



terms to call him a navigator. If the test he ability to 

 take a ship round the world, poking into every un- 

 described, 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 icas 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 he found his positions, or more out of date than his 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 in New York ; that he never 

 worked up a " dead reckoning; " and that the extreme 

 limit of time that he took to work out his observations 

 was ten minutes. In fact, all our operations in seaman- 

 ship or navigation were run on the same happy-go-lucky 

 principle. If it was required to " tack " ship, there 

 was no formal parade and preparation for the man- 

 oeuvre, not even as much as would be made in a Goole 

 billy-boy. Without any previous intimation, the helm 

 would be put down, and round she would come, the 

 yards being trimmed by whoever happened to be nearest 

 to the braces. The old tub seemed to like it that way, 

 for she never missed stays or exhibited any of that un- 

 willingness to do what she was required that is such 

 a frequent characteristic of merchantmen. Even getting 



