That was the question which Captain Jason Argo asked his first officer as they stood on the bridge together. The great black hull of the steamer Golden Fleece, driven by the powerful quadruple-expansion engines, was cleaving its way westward at a flying gait of nineteen knots an hour. There was a thundering hill of foam under her bows, and a massive cloud of oily brown smoke went rushing sternward from her two big funnels. She had encountered only one bit of fresh weather since leaving Queenstown, for it was hardly time yet for heavy gales. But now the sky had become overcast with a thin haze of clouds, which obscured the sun completely.
"I'm afraid," answered the first officer, "that we're in for a settled spell of cloudy weather and fog."
"And I'm morally certain that you're right," said the Captain, with a serious face, as he thought of what was before him.
When the celestial bodies—the sun, moon, and stars—cannot be seen, then begins grave trouble for the navigator. As long as these are visible, by observing their altitudes above the horizon with the sextant—an instrument designed for that purpose—and by some simple astronomical calculations, he can ascertain the latitude and longitude of his ship, and thus know just where he is and which way to steer in order to reach his port. But the moment he loses the heavenly bodies he must feel his way into port by "dead reckoning," which consists of measuring the actual distance sailed by means of the log-line, and of ascertaining the direction by the compass. It is a method subject to errors of many kinds, caused by incorrect registering of the log, by deviation of the compass, and by currents. It is like trying to walk through a room in the dark by counting the number of your steps. So it was not remarkable that Captain Jason Argo looked grave.
"At noon to-day we made our position 47° west longitude and 46° 30' north latitude," said the Captain, reflectively.
"Yes, sir," answered the first officer.
"As we are steering, that should have made us seventy-five miles from the easterly edge of the Newfoundland Banks."
"To a dot, sir."
"And it is now three o'clock. What does the patent log show?"
"It is registering nineteen and three-quarter knots an hour."