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Disko showed him the meaning of the thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said, laid over any government publication whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banks Le Have, Western, Banquereau, St. Pierre, Green, and Grand talking "cod" meantime. Taught him, too, the principle on which the "hog-yoke" was worked.
"Got a hog-yoke, I see," he said, "Be ye a mate?" I told him I had been. "Well, sink me, my boy, that's just what I am aboard here, and they'll be looking for another to match me. I saw what ye were when I first raised ye coming along the dock, and sez I, ye're just my size, my bully." As he could have walked under my arm when extended horizontally, I saw he had no poor opinion of himself.
Then Counahan tuk the hog-yoke an' thrembled over it for a whoile, an' made out, betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin' in his head, that they was to the south'ard o' Sable Island, gettin' along glorious, but speakin' nothin'. Then they broached another keg, an' quit speculatin' about anythin' fer another spell.
"I hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make him work a piece an' learn him how to handle the hog-yoke," said Disko. "He has twice my boy's head for figgers." "By the way," Cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to make of your boy?" Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin.
Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him. Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke" under the bed-bag in his bunk.
The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac, Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye.
But anything cruder than the "rule-of-thumb" way in which he found his positions, or more out of date than his "hog-yoke," or quadrant, I have never seen. I suppose we carried a chronometer, though I never saw it or heard the cry of "stop," which usually accompanies a.m. or p.m. "sights" taken for longitude.
"Not all Naval officers are intended to be engineer officers," grunted Midshipman Dalzell. "If you don't feel clever enough in that line, just put in your application for watch officer's work." "Take navigation," Dave continued. "I stand just fairly well in the theory of the thing. But I've no real knack with a sextant." "Well, the sextant is only a hog-yoke," growled Dalzell.
"Yes; but I shiver every time I pick up the hog-yoke under the watchful gaze of an instructor." "Humph! Only yesterday I heard Lieutenant-Commander Richards compliment you for your work in nav." "Yes; but that was the mathematical end. I'm all right on the paper end and the theoretical work, but it's the practical end that I'm afraid of."
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