They began to assort the heaped-up mass of things in the cave, putting tools on one side, provisions on the other, and odd things in the centre. After awhile Mark looked up at his watch.
“Why, it’s past five! Tea time at home.”
“I don’t know,” said Bevis. “I expect the time’s different—it’s longitude.”
“We are hours later, then?”
“While it’s tea time here, it’s breakfast there.”
“When we go to bed, they get up. Here’s the astrolabe. Take the observation.”
“So I will.”
The sun was lower now, just over the tops of the trees. Bevis hung the circle to the gate-post of the stockade and moved the tube till he could see the sun through it. It read 20 degrees on the graduated disc.
“Twenty degrees north latitude,” he said. “It’s not on the equator.”
“But it’s in the tropics.”