“Why, when you go into the house, take a piece of paper, and go to the window, and make some dots upon it, for all the stars around that one. Make the dots just in the places that the stars seem to be in. Then let them all go. They will rise more and more, and go overhead, and down in the west, and to-morrow night they will come up in the east again; and then you can look at them again, and see if the bright star has changed its place at all.”
Rollo said that he meant to do that; and then he said that he began to feel cold, and wanted to go in. But Jonas told him that he ought to wait and help finish the dial.
So they went to the place which Jonas had selected, and Jonas, looking up first at the North Star, made a hole in the ground, with an iron bar, in an oblique direction, so that the bar should point pretty nearly to the North Star. Then he drove in one of his stakes in the same way. He then made a hole, perpendicularly, directly under the end of this inclined stake, and drove the other stake down into that. The two upper ends of the stakes were now together.
Then Jonas stooped down, so as to bring his eye near the edge of the inclined stake, at the lower end, so that he could “sight” along the edge of it, towards the star. He had previously cut a notch in it, so that he could get his eye down far enough to look directly along the edge. At the same time, Rollo took hold of the upper end, and stood ready to move it either way, as Jonas might direct, until it should point exactly towards the North Star.
“Down,” said Jonas.
Then Rollo moved it a little down.
“Down more.”
Rollo moved it farther.
“Up—up a little,” added Jonas. “There—that will do. Now hold the two stakes firmly together, exactly so.”