For Treasure Bound

by Harry Collingwood

By noon we were in Plymouth Sound, when we made a short leg to the southward until we could weather Rame Head; then went about once more, stretched across Whitesand Bay until the ebb-tide began to make again, and then again hove about and stood to the southward and westward, on the starboard tack.

At six o’clock that evening we passed the Lizard lighthouse, distant two and a half miles, and here we took our departure.

For the benefit of those who may be ignorant of the meaning of this expression, I may as well explain that the commander of a vessel takes his departure from the last well-known point of land he expects to see before launching into mid-ocean, by noting, as accurately as he possibly can, its compass-bearing and distance from his ship at a particular hour.

With these data he is enabled to lay down upon his chart the exact position of his ship at that hour, and from this spot the ship’s reckoning commences. The courses she steers, and the number of knots or nautical miles (sixty of which are equal to sixty-nine and a half English miles) she sails every hour, together with certain other items of information, such as the direction of the wind, the direction and speed of the currents, if any, which she passes through, and the state of the weather, the lee-way the ship makes, etcetera, etcetera, are all entered in the log-book; and at noon every day, by means of certain simple calculations, the ship’s position is ascertained from these particulars.

The entering of all these particulars in the log-book is termed keeping the dead reckoning, and the working out of the calculations just referred to is called working up the days work.

This, however, only gives the ship’s position approximately, because it is difficult to judge accurately of the amount of lee-way which a ship makes, and it is not at all times easy to detect the presence of currents, both of which produce a certain amount of deviation from the apparent course of the ship.

To correct, therefore, all errors of this kind, which are otherwise impossible to detect when the ship is out of sight of land, various observations of the sun, moon, or stars are taken, whereby the exact latitude or longitude (or sometimes both together) of the ship at the moment of observation is ascertained.

This short lesson in navigation over, we will now rejoin the Water Lily, which we left at six p.m. off the Lizard, on the starboard tack.

It was my “eight hours out” that night, and when I took the tiller at eight o’clock we were dashing along a good honest eight knots, under whole canvas and a jib-headed gaff-topsail. The night was as fine as the previous one, but with a little more wind, and we were just beginning to get within the influence of the Atlantic swell. There was no sea on, but the long, majestic, heaving swell was sweeping with stately motion towards the Channel, rising like low hills on either side of us as our little barkie sank between them, and gleaming coldly, like polished steel, where the moon’s rays fell upon their crests. But the little Lily sprang gaily onward upon her course, mounting the watery ridges and gliding down into the liquid valleys with the ease and grace of a seabird, and without throwing so much as a drop of water upon her deck.

The serenity and beauty of the night, the brilliancy of the stars which studded the deep purple vault above me, and the gentle murmur of the wind through the cutter’s rigging, combined to produce a sensation of solemnity almost amounting to melancholy within me, and my thoughts flew back to the beloved sister I had so recently parted with, wondering whether she was at that moment thinking of me, or whether we should ever meet again, and, if so, how long hence and under what circumstances; and so on, and so on, until I was recalled to myself by a sprinkling of spray upon my cheek, whereupon I awoke, in the first place, to the fact that the breeze had so far freshened that the Lily was flying through the water with her lee gunwale pretty well under; and, in the second, to the knowledge that I had outstayed my watch a good half-hour.