Chapter 4 - Page 2

"A thousand miles and no less."

"With a fair trade breeze, then, and a boat sail, that is a good
twelve days' passage, but calms and currents may make it a month,
perhaps more." So saying, he shook his old head, and his yellow hair
streamed.

But trying my best to chase away these misgivings, he at last gave
them over. He assured me I might count upon him to his uttermost
keel.

My Viking secured, I felt more at ease; and thoughtfully considered
how the enterprise might best be accomplished.

There was no time to be lost. Every hour was carrying us farther and
farther from the parallel most desirable for us to follow in our
route to the westward. So, with all possible dispatch, I
matured my plans, and communicated them to Jarl, who gave several old
hints--having ulterior probabilities in view--which were not
neglected.

Strange to relate, it was not till my Viking, with a rueful face,
reminded me of the fact, that I bethought me of a circumstance
somewhat alarming at the first blush. We must push off without chart
or quadrant; though, as will shortly be seen, a compass was by no
means out of the question. The chart, to be sure, I did not so much
lay to heart; but a quadrant was more than desirable. Still, it was
by no means indispensable. For this reason. When we started, our
latitude would be exactly known; and whether, on our voyage westward,
we drifted north or south therefrom, we could not, by any
possibility, get so far out of our reckoning, as to fail in striking
some one of a long chain of islands, which, for many degrees, on both
sides of the equator, stretched right across our track.

For much the same reason, it mattered little, whether on our passage
we daily knew our longitude; for no known land lay between us and the
place we desired to reach. So what could be plainer than this: that
if westward we patiently held on our way, we must eventually achieve
our destination?

As for intervening shoals or reefs, if any there were, they
intimidated us not. In a boat that drew but a few inches of water,
but an indifferent look-out would preclude all danger on that score.
At all events, the thing seemed feasible enough, notwithstanding old
Jarl's superstitious reverence for nautical instruments, and the
philosophical objections which might have been urged by a pedantic
disciple of Mercator.

Very often, as the old maxim goes, the simplest things are the most
startling, and that, too, from their very simplicity. So cherish no
alarms, if thus we addressed the setting sun--"Be thou, old pilot,
our guide!"