“I think I could almost do this part of the trip myself. It’s pretty plain sailin’.”
Ned took up this section of instructions and produced a map of the Gulf of Maine and the Nova Scotia peninsula. A straight line had been drawn on it from Ipswich harbor to Fogo Island.
“We can start from Ipswich almost any old way, so long as it’s seaward,” he began with another laugh. “But, when we pick up the two lighthouses on Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann they ought to lie ten miles abeam to the south.”
“What’s abeam?” asked Buck innocently.
“Anything at right angles with the deck,” explained Bob learnedly. “That means when a vessel is nearest to an object it’s passing. In other words, when you don’t see it forward—I mean for’ard—or astern.”
“At that point,” continued Ned, “we simply bring our vessel on a plain compass course of E. N. E., and buckle down to it. If it were night, when a little later we passed a red and white flash light eight miles abeam to the north—”
“Nor’ard,” corrected Bob.
“To the nor’ard,” repeated Ned, “we’d know exactly where we were—fifteen miles from Thatcher’s Island and off the Isle of Shoals. And so it goes across the Bay. Ninety miles farther, or a half hour’s flight, ought to put Montigan Light twelve miles abeam north of us, if we are on our course. Then it’s 105 miles to Matinicus with its two fixed white lights.”
“Oh, I see,” commented Buck with a chuckle. “You’ve got a mile post every hundred miles or so.”
“Every half hour or so,” replied Ned significantly.