required most of his tactics, especially in heavy weather. Did you
know, Rosy dear, that sailors weigh the weather, and know when it is
heavy and when it is light?"

"I did not, aunt; nor do I understand now how it can very well be
done."

"Oh! child, before you have been at sea a week, you will learn so
many things that are new, and get so many ideas of which you never
had any notion before, that you'll not be the same person. My
captain had an instrument he called a thermometer, and with that he
used to weigh the weather, and then he would write down in the
log-book `today, heavy weather, or to-morrow, light weather,' just
as it happened, and that helped him mightily along in his voyages."

"Mrs. Budd has merely mistaken the name of the instrument--the
`barometer' is what she wished to say," put in Mulford, opportunely.

Rose looked grateful, as well as relieved. Though profoundly
ignorant on these subjects herself, she had always suspected her
aunt's knowledge. It was, consequently, grateful to her to ascertain
that, in this instance, the old lady's mistake had been so trifling.

"Well, it may have been the barometer, for I know he had them both,"
resumed the aunt. "Barometer, or thermometer, it do n't make any
great difference; or quadrant, or sextant. They are all instruments,
and sometimes he used one, and sometimes another. Sailors take on
board the sun, too, and have an instrument for that, as well as one
to weigh the weather with. Sometimes they take on board the stars,
and the moon, and `fill their ships with the heavenly bodies,' as