CHAPTER XVII.

THE CORAL ISLANDS

HOW far we sailed to the westward after leaving the Marquesas, or what
might have been our latitude and longitude at any particular time, or
how many leagues we voyaged on our passage to Tahiti, are matters
about which, I am sorry to say, I cannot with any accuracy enlighten
the reader. Jermin, as navigator, kept our reckoning; and, as hinted
before, kept it all to himself. At noon, he brought out his quadrant,
a rusty old thing, so odd-looking that it might have belonged to an
astrologer.

Sometimes, when rather flustered from his potations, he went
staggering about deck, instrument to eye, looking all over for the
sun--a phenomenon which any sober observer might have seen right
overhead. How upon earth he contrived, on some occasions, to settle
his latitude, is more than I can tell. The longitude he must either
have obtained by the Rule of Three, or else by special revelation. Not
that the chronometer in the cabin was seldom to be relied on, or was
any ways fidgety; quite the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by
that means, no doubt, the true Greenwich time--at the period of
stopping, at least--was preserved to a second.

The mate, however, in addition to his "Dead Reckoning," pretended to
ascertain his meridian distance from Bow Bells by an occasional lunar
observation. This, I believe, consists in obtaining with the proper