“I can do Plane, Traverse, Middle-Latitude, and Mercator’s Sailing,” I answered. “I can also do a Day’s Work; I can use my quadrant with accuracy; can find the Latitude by a meridian altitude of the sun, moon, or a star; can find the error and rate of the chronometer, and also the longitude by it; can determine the variation of the compass; can find the longitude by a ‘lunar’; can do the Pole Star problem; and—well, I think that is about all, sir, thus far.”
“And a very creditable ‘all,’ too,” answered the Admiral, evidently well pleased. “And what about your seamanship?” he continued.
“I believe I am pretty good at that too, sir,” I said. “I was at Portsmouth, in the dockyard, every day during the fitting-out of the frigate, and watched the whole process of rigging her. When I first saw her she had nothing standing but her three lower-masts.”
“Well,” remarked Sir Peter, “you ought to have picked up a little knowledge relative to the spars and rigging of a ship during that time. But did you? That is the question. Come, I’ll put you through your facings a bit, if you are not too sleepy. Supposing that it became necessary for you to get the maintop over the masthead, how would you go to work?”
I considered a moment, recalled the operation as I had witnessed it, and then proceeded to describe what I had seen.
“Yes; very good,” commented my companion. “Now, get your lower rigging into place, and set it up.”
I described how I would do that; and also answered several other questions, apparently to his satisfaction.
“Very well,” he said, “that’s all rigger’s work; exceedingly important to know, of course, but still not exactly seamanship. Now, young gentleman, suppose yourself to be in command of a fine frigate—as I hope you will be some day, please God. You are turning to windward in a fresh breeze, under all plain sail, and it becomes necessary to tack. Describe the various evolutions.”
I did so; and then the old gentleman gradually took me, still aboard my suppositious frigate, through a rapidly freshening breeze into a regular hurricane, until I had got the ship hove-to under bare poles, with a tarpaulin lashed in the weather mizen rigging, and then he shook hands with me and dismissed me to my room.
The next morning, immediately after first breakfast, we got under way in the Admiral’s ketureen—a sort of gig with a roof to it—and drove down to the wharf at Kingston, where the barge, a fine boat, was waiting for us. The sea-breeze had set in and was piping up merrily, and in about three-quarters of an hour we were alongside the dockyard wall at Port Royal. Here the Admiral left me, with instructions to go off aboard the guardship at once, and bring my log-books ashore for his inspection. This I did, but it was nearly noon before Sir Peter was ready to attend to me, and even then it was after all but a cursory glance that he bestowed upon my books. But, cursory though it was, what he saw appeared to satisfy him, for he was good enough to express his approval as he closed the books and pushed them across the table to me.