The Voyage of the Steadfast | Page 5

Pacific. Royals and studding-sails were set to catch the light breeze which sent her gliding majestically along over the calm ocean; her six whaleboats, with stem and stern alike, hung from the davits above her black sides. A tropical sun shone down on her deck, making the pitch hiss and bubble in the seams, and driving all on deck whose duty did not compel them to keep elsewhere, into such shade as the sails and bulwarks afforded.
Captain Graybrook, a fine-looking man, with an open, intelligent expression of countenance, stood aft, sextant in hand, prepared to take a meridional altitude. Near him was his second mate, Leonard Champion, with two boys, one of whom also held a sextant.
"You can now, Harry, take an observation as well as I can, and before long, if you pay attention, you will become a good navigator," observed the young mate.
"Thank you for teaching me, Mr Champion; that's just my wish," answered Harry.
"Where there's a will there's a way; and you, Mr Bass," said the mate, turning to the other boy, "ought to do as well as Harry by this time."
"Dickey is fonder of skylarking than shooting the stars," remarked Harry, laughing.
"Not fonder than you are, Harry," retorted Dickey Bass, who was the son of a former shipmate of Captain Graybrook, and brought by him to sea through regard for the boy's father. "I don't happen to understand sums as well as you do, and so I don't always get my day's work done as correctly as yours."
"Always! why, if we were to go by your reckoning, Dickey, we should have been in the middle of the forests of South America, or on the top of the Andes, before now. When did you ever make a right calculation?" asked Harry, who delighted in bantering Dickey, though they were really great friends.
"Why, for the last fortnight I don't suppose I have been more than eight or ten degrees out at the utmost."
Mr Champion and Harry laughed heartily.
"Rather a serious error, Mr Bass."
"I meant minutes," said Dickey, "or perhaps seconds; I always forget which is which."
At that moment Captain Graybrook lifted his instrument to his eye, and the mate and Harry followed his example.
"The sun has dipped; make it noon," said the captain; and the ship's bell was struck.
Having written off their observations and quickly made their calculations, the ship was found to be about seventeen degrees south of the line, off the coast of Peru.
Look-out men were sent aloft, for they were now approaching a part of the ocean where whales were in those days likely to be found. As they looked over the side, many polypi, medusae, and squid were observed floating on the surface; and occasionally a covey of flying-fish, rising from the water, darted rapidly over it, quickly again, as their brilliant wings dried, to sink down and become the prey of their enemies, the dolphin or bonito. A seaman had just hauled a bucket of water on deck. Within it was a gelatinous-looking mass. The mate and his young companions examined it.
"That is part of a squid," he observed, "the whale's food. Probably the remainder is down the monster's maw. We shall sight a whale before the day is over, I hope."
"I hope so too," said Harry. "I long to see one killed and brought alongside. We have had a dull time of it since we touched at Valparaiso. I thought we should have captured a dozen or more before this."
"You will have to learn patience at sea, my boy," observed the mate. "We have three years to remain out, and may consider ourselves fortunate if we get a full ship at the end of that time."
The sextants had been returned to their cases in the cabin, and Harry and his chum, Dickey Bass, finding it very hot, seated themselves in the shade by the side of a gun, of which the Steadfast carried eight, besides a good supply of muskets and cutlasses and other weapons; for, having to visit regions inhabited by fierce and savage tribes, she was well armed.
"I say, Harry, what was old Tom talking to you about in your watch last night, and what made you look so grave this morning? I could not tell what had come over you," said Dickey Bass.
"He asked me whether I was prepared to die. I thought it an odd question."
"I should think it was," said young Bass. "What did you say in return?"
"I told him that I had not thought about it, and that, as I enjoyed life, I had no intention of leaving it," answered Harry. "He then reminded me that I might fall overboard any day, or the ship might be lost with all hands, or the boat in which I happened to be might be capsized, or I might