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Updated: May 13, 2025
Captain Morgan, lashed to the bridge, has full confidence in himself, his doubled watch ahead, his compasses, and the throbbing engines below. Dangers have now aroused the man and his courage grows apace. Moments supreme come to every captain at sea, the same as to captains who wage wars on the land.
Starbuck a lance without a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles. Quick!" Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Harry had no one on whom he could depend for keeping a correct reckoning. The binnacle had been knocked away, and the other compasses on board were out of order. It was impossible to ascertain in what direction the ship was driving. The Thisbe was nowhere to be seen. A leak was sprung, the pumps were manned, but the water gained on them.
"Dry facts" wore absorbed unconsciously; angular diagrams of mathematical relations appeared on the big blackboard so clearly and concisely that even Shorty Mcneil ceased to dread the problems; hours were cheerfully spent at the big mess table in making out tabulated reports and drawing neat maps; and many more hours were spent with compasses and levels, telescopes and heliotropes measuring and judging distances and noting results on the hills and by the lake near camp.
He's what he calls out his way a 'tenderfoot, he says, but he's game and can be depended on. Have you made up your mind where she'll cross?" and he bent over the chart. The Captain picked up a pair of compasses, balanced them for a moment in his fingers, and with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle, dropped the points astride a wavy line known as the steamer track.
All at once she struck something which jarred her from end to end. It was found that she had run right on a whale. Casks of water were thrown out of the ship to make her lighter, but the bottom of the ship was badly injured. The men on board had to get out the boats at once. They took food and water with them, and compasses to sail by.
Every now and then he would stop in his walk, and would look over the side to judge how fast the vessel was going through the water, or he would examine the compasses to assure himself that they were true, or he would cast his eye aloft to see how his sails drew, or his clear, full voice would be heard issuing some necessary order for the government of the ship.
In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
When, having meanwhile undergone a valuable discipline of the perceptions, he has reached a fit age for using a pair of compasses, he will, while duly appreciating these as enabling him to verify his ocular guesses, be still hindered by the imperfections of the approximative method.
Victor Carrington saw that the brandy had by this time exercised a potent influence over Mr. Spavin's groom; but he had full confidence in the man's power to do what he wanted done. James Hawkins was gifted with that low cunning which peculiarly adapts a small villain for the service of a greater villain. At nine o'clock on the following evening, the two met again at the "Goat and Compasses."
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