'Sou'-sou'-east,' the ordinary seaman attempted.
'You thick-'eaded galoot!' Bartlett growled. 'Don't you want to learn nothin'? Cos, if you don't, you're goin' the right way about it. Didn't you 'ave no teachin' afore you joined the navy? Think it's a 'ome for lost dogs, or wot? I asked you wot was hopposite to west-nor'-west—see?'
'East-sou'-east,' said Hudson at last.
'Right! Why couldn't you 'ave said so before, 'stead o' wastin' my time like this 'ere, you lop-eared, razor-necked son of a sea-cook? You perishin' O.D.'s don't seem to 'ave no common-sense, some'ow.'
And so, point by point, degree by degree, the petty officer gradually hammered the subject into their skulls until their brains whirled and their heads ached. Much of what he told them went in at one ear and out at the other; but something stuck, and at the end of a fortnight most of them could box the compass with a fair degree of accuracy, knew that its circumference was divided into thirty-two points and three hundred and sixty degrees, and were aware that each point was exactly eleven degrees fifteen minutes from the next. In short, they came to regard it as what it really is, an instrument whereby 'the mariner is able to guide a ship in any required direction,' and not merely as a complicated invention of the Evil One specially designed to involve the moribund brains of ordinary seamen in intricate mental gymnastics. What little wizard inside the compass-needle induced it to keep pointing towards the magnetic pole, a spot which most of them pictured as a desolate region of Esquimaux, icebergs, and polar bears, they did not know. They were quite content to take it for granted that it did so. The science of terrestrial magnetism, luckily for them, did not enter into their curriculum.
The learning of the marks and other details of the hand lead-line was quite a simple matter, and all the class—even Hudson, the fool of the party—could recite it all, poll-parrot fashion, at the end of the first day's instruction.
'Th' weight o' th' lead is ten ter fourteen pound, an' at th' bottom of 'im is a 'ole ter take a lump o' taller or soap ter hascertain th' nature o' th' bottom.' Here the reciter took a deep breath, and gazed anxiously at the instructor to see if he was correct.
Bartlett nodded encouragingly.
'Th' line is one an' a heighth hinches in circumference, an' is twenty-five fadum long, an' one end is secured ter an 'ide becket at th' top o' th' lead by means of a heye-splice. Th' hother end is made fast to a stanchion in th' chains. Th' line is marked as follers: at two fadum, two strips o' leather; at three fadum, three strips; five an' fifteen, a piece o' white buntin'; seven an' seventeen, red buntin'; thirteen, blue buntin'; ten, a piece o' leather wi' a 'ole in 'im; twenty, two knots. These is orl known as marks, cos they are marked, an' orl them fadums wot ain't marked is called deeps.'
Even Hudson knew all about the theoretical part of the business, so we need go no further.