Chapter 34

How They Steered On Their Way

When we quitted the Chamois for the brigantine, we must have been at
least two hundred leagues to the westward of the spot, where we had
abandoned the Arcturion. Though how far we might then have been,
North or South of the Equator, I could not with any certainty divine.

But that we were not removed any considerable distance from the Line,
seemed obvious. For in the starriest night no sign of the extreme
Polar constellations was visible; though often we scanned the
northern and southern horizon in search of them. So far as regards
the aspect of the skies near the ocean's rim, the difference of
several degrees in one's latitude at sea, is readily perceived by a
person long accustomed to surveying the heavens.

If correct in my supposition, concerning our longitude at the time
here alluded to, and allowing for what little progress we had been
making in the Parki, there now remained some one hundred leagues to
sail, ere the country we sought would be found. But for obvious
reasons, how long precisely we might continue to float out of sight
of land, it was impossible to say. Calms, light breezes, and currents
made every thing uncertain. Nor had we any method of estimating our
due westward progress, except by what is called Dead Reckoning,--the
computation of the knots run hourly; allowances' being made for the
supposed deviations from our course, by reason of the ocean streams;
which at times in this quarter of the Pacific rim with very great
velocity.

Now, in many respects we could not but feel safer aboard the
Parki than in the Chamois. The sense of danger is less vivid, the
greater the number of lives involved. He who is ready to despair in
solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a
plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.

Still, in the brigantine there were many sources of uneasiness and
anxiety unknown to me in the whale-boat. True, we had now between us
and the deep, five hundred good planks to one lath in our buoyant
little chip. But the Parki required more care and attention;
especially by night, when a vigilant look-out was indispensable. With
impunity, in our whale-boat, we might have run close to shoal or
reef; whereas, similar carelessness or temerity now, might prove
fatal to all concerned.

Though in the joyous sunlight, sailing through the sparkling sea, I
was little troubled with serious misgivings; in the hours of darkness
it was quite another thing. And the apprehensions, nay terrors I
felt, were much augmented by the remissness of both Jarl and Samoa,
in keeping their night-watches. Several times I was seized with a
deadly panic, and earnestly scanned the murky horizon, when rising