A short delay ensued from our clocks being fast on account of our having drifted to the eastward of where they had last been set.
Then all at once Mr Fosset sang out.
“It’s just noon, sir, now. The sun’s crossing the meridian!”
“All right, make it so,” replied the skipper. “Bos’un, strike eight bells.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came back from old Masters away forward, and then followed the melodious chime of the ship’s bell that hung immediately under the beak of the fo’c’s’le. “Ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting.”
“Now,” going into the wheel-house, “let us look at the chronometer and see what Greenwich time says, and then tot up our reckonings!”
The two others followed him into the little room on the bridge, sitting down to a table in which the track chart of the ship’s course lay, and all were busy for some few moments calculating and working out our latitude and longitude.
I was standing by the doorway after bringing up the correct time of the chronometers, which the skipper kept locked up in his own cabin to prevent their being meddled with, and I could see he looked puzzled, adding up and subtracting his figures over and over again, as if he thought he must have made some error, though he found that he invariably came to the same result.
“Well, Fosset,” he cried at length, unable to restrain himself any longer. “What do you make it?”
“39° 20 minutes north latitude sir, and 47° 15 minutes west longitude.”