"Poor old duffer! I'll bet he was disappointed," came sympathetically from Christopher. "Think of his having to stay at home and miss the fun of seeing how his invention was working!"
"It was pretty tough," agreed McPhearson. "William, in the meantime, sailed out of Portsmouth harbor and after eighteen days of voyaging the vessel, supposed by ordinary calculation to be 13° 50' west of that port, was by Harrison's watch 15° 19', whereupon the captain of the ship immediately cried that it was worthless. If William had not been a chip of the old block and had inherited some of his father's courage, wisdom, and persistence, he would have lost his nerve at this crisis and allowed himself to come home beaten. But evidently he believed in the venture he had in hand. Perhaps, too, the thought of how disappointed his poor old dad would be were he to return spurred him to hold on with bulldog tenacity. So instead of being cowed by this apparent failure he insisted that if Madeira were correctly charted on the captain's map, it would be sighted the next day. So convincing was his prediction that the reluctant officer at length consented to continue on his course, and sure enough the following morning there loomed Madeira just as William had prophesied! Having won out on this forecast, William kept on predicting just where the other islands would be and behold, one after another they came into sight!"
"Well, after a trip of sixty-one days the Deptford reached Port Royal, and the chronometer (for that is what this new sort of watch really was) proved to be only about nine seconds slow. Then followed the voyage home. William Harrison had been gone five months in all—five months which to his poor, anxious old father must have seemed five years in length. During that entire time the chronometer had varied only one minute and five seconds."
"Pooh! That wasn't anything to get hot over," exploded Christopher.
"And yet a variation as great as that represented an error of eighteen miles—a big enough distance to admit of a ship being run on no end of rocks and shoals."
"I didn't realize it amounted to so many miles," was the sober reply.
"Probably the error even in miles did not shock people of that time as much as it would us, for they were accustomed to inaccuracies. Moreover such a record was worlds better than anything previously known. Yet notwithstanding this fact, the commissioners haggled over awarding the prize money and after advancing another £5,000 insisted that William make a second trip."
"Shucks!"
McPhearson paid no heed to the interruption.