‘With pleasure,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘But I have no sextant.’
‘I have a couple,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will lend you one;’ and down he went for it with a fluttered demeanour of eagerness.
I lingered till I supposed he had entered his cabin, then put my head into the skylight and called softly to Miss Temple, who was seated almost directly beneath for the air there: ‘He wishes me to take an observation with him.’
‘What is that?’ she answered, also speaking softly and turning up her face.
‘I am to shoot the sun—you know, Miss Temple.’
‘Oh, pray, contrive to make some error—commit some blunder to make him suppose’—— She checked herself, and I heard the captain say that it was very hot as he came to the companion steps.
In a few moments he arrived on deck, hugging a brace of sextant cases to his heart. He told me to choose; I took the one nearest to me, perceived that the instrument was almost new, and as it was now hard upon the hour of noon, applied it to my eye, the captain standing alongside of me ogling the sun likewise. I could see the men forward, waiting for the skipper to make eight bells, staring their hardest at the now unusual spectacle to them of two sextants at work. For my part, I should have been shocked by the weakness of my memory if I had not known what to do. During the two years I had spent at sea I was thoroughly grounded in navigation—such as it was in those days; and as I stood screwing the sun down to the horizon, the whole practice of the art, so far as my education in it went, came back to me as freshly as though I had been taking sights ever since.
We made eight bells. Mr. Lush came aft to relieve the deck, and I went below with Captain Braine to work out the barque’s position.
I smiled at Miss Temple as I entered the cuddy; she watched me eagerly, and the movement of her lips seemed to say, ‘Don’t be long.’ In fact, her face had that meaning; and I gave her a reassuring nod ere turning to follow the captain into his berth. The apartment was small and cheerful, plainly stocked with the customary details of a humble skipper’s sea bedroom; a cot, a small table, a cushioned locker, a few mathematical instruments, a little hanging shelf of strictly nautical books, and so on. His chronometer was a good one, handsome for those days, of a quality one would hardly expect to find in a little trading-barque of the pattern of this Lady Blanche. There was a bag of charts in a corner, and a small chart of the world lay half unrolled upon the table, with a bit of the Atlantic Ocean visible exhibiting the skipper’s ‘pricking’ or tracing of his course down to the preceding day.
‘Here’s ink and paper, sir,’ said he; ‘sit ye down, and let’s see if we can tally.’