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In still another way he revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like Kant, served the neighbors as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him going forth for a walk.

They carry music in their inside arrangements, but they want to be handled carefully or you put them out of order. And perhaps you must n't expect them to be quite as good timekeepers as the professional chronometer watches that make a specialty of being exact within a few seconds a month. They think too much of themselves.

McPhearson paid no heed to the interruption. "This time," continued he, "the undaunted young clockmaker embarked on an English man-of-war, the Tartar, and sailed for the Barbados, the chronometer gaining only forty-three seconds; and then back he came on the New Elizabeth, making the round trip of one hundred fifty-six days with only a total gain of fifty-four seconds in his father's instrument."

But the picture invariably dissolved as soon as it was conjured out of the mists, and in its place glowed the vision of a girl in Mission dress, simple and sweet: the girl whose good name he had defended; whose picture now lay in the lid of his chronometer box, where he must see it every time he went to his room. Vandersee asked permission and went below to see Little.

Then I started to my feet, but the little fairy had gone fluttering away forward, so I took my sextant and went on deck. In a minute or two she reappeared, and, seeing me with the sextant in my hand, opened the chronometer and got the slate, in readiness for taking the time. I obtained three most excellent sights, and from them worked up my longitude.

There the captain fixed his position and used a chronometer to calculate his longitude, which he double-checked against his previous observations of hour angles. Then he told me: "Professor Aronnax, we're in longitude 137 degrees 15' west " "West of which meridian?" I asked quickly, hoping the captain's reply might give me a clue to his nationality.

Besides I have been in east longitude all the time. I sailed from Fiji, and Fiji is in east longitude. Now I shall chart my position and prove it by dead reckoning." But other troubles and doubts awaited me. Here is a sample of one. In south latitude, when the sun is in northern declination, chronometer sights may be taken early in the morning. I took mine at eight o'clock.

The success of the chronometer was wonderful. On arriving at Jamaica, the chronometer varied but four seconds from Greenwich time, and on returning to England the entire variation was a little short of two minutes; which was equivalent to a longitudinal variation of eighteen miles. The ship had been absent from Portsmouth one hundred and forty-seven days.

The longitude of this point according to the chronometer is 67 degrees 10 minutes 31 seconds. I attempted to determine the magnetic dip and intensity, but was prevented by a heavy storm of rain. As the sky again became serene in the afternoon, we lay down to rest that night on a vast beach, on the southern bank of the Orinoco, nearly in the meridian of the little town of Muitaco, or Real Corona.

If I had lived on Mars all my life, I could not have had a more intimate knowledge of my surroundings. I seemed to know exactly how to proceed, and after attending to several important details, and carefully noting the temperature of the virator on a thermometer placed for that purpose, I consulted a chronometer to ascertain how long it would be safe for me to remain on Mars.