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All the time he was speaking the Professor continued to consult his chronometer, and he was probably right in his prognostics. Soon the raft resumed its motion, in a very rapid and disorderly way, which lasted two minutes or thereabout; and then again it stopped as suddenly as before. "Good," said my uncle, observing the hour, "in ten we shall start again." "In ten minutes?" "Yes precisely.
Do you mean to say," asked the pilot when the navigator had been indicated to him, "that you brought this ship home on picked-up navigation?" "Didn't know anything about it when we left Callao," answered the sailor, modestly. "The steward knew enough to wind the chronometer until I learned how. We made an offing and steered due south, while I studied the books and charts.
I glanced at the chronometer. "Half after twelve. We have been out seventy-two hours, so it must be midnight. Nevertheless I am going to have a look at the blessed sky that I had given up all hope of ever seeing again," and so saying I lifted the bars from the inner door, and swung it open.
Bad weather and an accident to his chronometer prevented his accomplishing his purpose, and, on the twenty-sixth of July, he turned reluctantly back, giving the name of Cape Disappointment to his last camping-place. Let us read the story as it is told in the journal of the party:
It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide is still rolling westward.
"I'm thankful he got it and hadn't died." "He died three years later an old man of eighty-three. Nevertheless he lived long enough to see his dream fulfilled. Sixty years of his life he had devoted to experimenting with and perfecting his chronometer. It was a great service to the world a deed that influenced not only all subsequent clockmaking but ultimately all marine enterprises.
Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had seen at St. James's.
At the moment of writing this we are lost at sea somewhere northeast of Ysabel and trying vainly to find Lord Howe Island, which is an atoll that cannot be sighted unless one is on top of it. The chronometer has gone wrong. The sun does not shine anyway, nor can I get a star observation at night, and we have had nothing but squalls and rain for days and days. The cook is gone.
Their first concern now was to shape their course for Magdalena Bay. Moran and Wilbur looked over Kitchell's charts and log-book, but the girl flung them aside disdainfully. "He's been sailing by the dead reckoning, and his navigation is drivel. Why, a cabin-boy would know better; and, to end with, the chronometer is run down.
Tugg turned to me again, drawling just the same as usual: "Keep a thing seven year, they say, and it's bound to come handy, no matter what it is. I bought a miscellaneous lot o' truck out o' a seaside store thar in Buenos Ayres because there was a right good chronometer went with the lot. Ah! that's the box, Pedro. Rip it open but have a care.
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