At nine o’clock, the greater portion of the heavens was quite unobscured, the moon shining out, although looking pale and watery and with a big burr round her that showed the still unsettled condition of the atmosphere; the wind, strange to say, continuing to blow with almost as great force from the north-west as when it began, nearly forty-eight hours before.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have a nasty night of it,” said Captain Miles, who had just then come up from below with his sextant. “Still, I’m glad to see our old friend the moon again, however greasy she may look. I haven’t been able to take an observation since Monday; so we’ll see what a lunar may do in the way of fixing our position.”
Just then, there was a break in the haze that had caused the watery appearance of the fair orb of night; and Captain Miles, taking advantage of the opportunity, took his angles, a sight of two of the constellations also helping his calculations, and giving him data to work upon. He then went down to his cabin again to work out the reckoning.
“Guess where we are, Marline?” he said when he came up for the second time. “I don’t think you’ll be able to tell within a degree!”
“Somewhere between the forties, I should think, with all this scudding about north and south,” replied the other.
“Well, I make it that we’re just about 33 degrees 10 minutes North, and 41 degrees West longitude. What do you think of that, eh?”
“Never!” exclaimed the first mate.
“But, it’s true enough,” returned Captain Miles. “I assure you I’ve tested my reckoning in every way, those star altitudes enabling me to correct my lunars. Yes, Marline, you see we did not lose so much by carrying on to the north as you fancied we would; and this blustering north-wester has now taken us almost eight hundred miles in the very direction we wanted to go. If we had lain to, as you wanted at first, we should now have been considerably to the southward of our position, and would probably have had to beat up northwards again; whereas now, as soon as the gale is blown out, we’ll be right in the trades for home.”
“And won’t we touch the Gulf Stream, then?” I asked.
“No, my boy, thank goodness, we’re a long way from that; but if you’re anxious to see the Gulf-weed I told you about, we’re now in its native home, a region called the Sargasso Sea.”