"Your remedy," continued Wolston, "might, perhaps, have obviated the difficulty; but Julius Cæsar thought of another that answered the purpose equally well. It was simply to add to every fourth civil year an additional day, making it to consist of three hundred and sixty-six instead of three hundred and sixty-five, This supplementary day was given to the month of February."
"Why February?"
"Because February, at that time, was reckoned the last month of the year. It was only in the reign of Charles IX. of France, or in the second half of the sixteenth century, that the civil year was made to begin on the 1st of January. As the end of February was five days before the 1st or kalends of March, the extra day was known by the phrase bis sexto (ante) calendus martii. Hence the fourth year is termed in the calendar bissextile, but is more usually called by us in England leap year."
"The remedy is certainly simple; but are your figures perfectly square? If you add a day every four years, do you not overleap the earth's fraction?"
"Yes, from ten to eleven minutes."
"And what becomes of these minutes? Are they allowed to run up another score?"
"No, not exactly. In 1582, the civil year had got ten clear days the start of the solar year, and Pope Gregory XIII. resolved to cancel them, which he effected by calling the day after the 4th of October the 15th."
"That manner of altering the rig and squaring the yards," said Willi laughing, "would make the people that lived then ten days older. If it had been ten years, the matter would have been serious. Had the Pope said to me privately, 'Willis, you are now only forty-seven, but to-morrow, my boy, you will fill your sails and steer right into fifty-seven,' I should have turned 'bout ship and cleared off. Few men care about being put upon a short allowance of life, any more than we sailors on short rations of rum."
"But you forget, Willis, that, though ten years were added to your age, you would not have died a day sooner for all that."
"Still, it is my idea that the Pope was not much smarter at taking a latitude than Mr. Julius Cæsar—but what are you laughing at?"