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He chatted with the men, surprised them by his candor on the question of compensation, and announced his resolve to make for the three-hundred-mile channel between Fernando Noronha and the mainland. "You see, it's this way, me lads," he explained affably. "We're short o' vittles an' bunker, an' if we kep' cruisin' east in this latitood we'd soon be drawrin' lots to see 'oo'd cut up juiciest.
"It's nigh on to fifteen year ago," said Silas, "that I was on the bark Mary Auguster, bound for Sydney, New South Wales, with a cargo of canned goods. We was somewhere about longitood a hundred an' seventy, latitood nothin', an' it was the twenty-second o' December, when we was ketched by a reg'lar typhoon which blew straight along, end on, fur a day an' a half. It blew away the storm-sails.
"Later on, that same day, Turnbull 'as the mate out into the main cabin and spreads a chart of the Pacific Hocean out on the table; and, readin' from a paper what 'e 'ad in 'is 'and, says, `Now, Mr Marshall, I'll trouble you to lay down on this 'ere chart a p'int bearin' latitood so-and-so and longitood so-and-so, I forgets what the figures was. `And when you've done that, he says, `you'll navigate this 'ere barque to that identical spot.
"As for me, I've learned what was required to enable me to get my certificate; but, after all, I don't really understand it properly. I can take the sun at noon, of course, and work out the ship's latitood; but, even at that, I've got no very great faith in myself; and as to the longitood well, there; I always feels that I may be right or I may be wrong. I never was much of a hand at figures.
Some of our men had never been over before, and one of the boat's crew confessed. He was quickly seized and brought before King Neptune. "Sit ye down, right there in that there cheer," said the king, scowling fiercely. The fellow sat down and stared, smiling at the monster. "Have ye paid fer comin' acrost this here latitood, me son?" asked the king. "No," said the sailor.
But, of course, he'll have to know whereabouts it is afore he can navigate the ship to it; and now that your pore father's um no longer aboard, I reckon that you're the only one who can say what's the latitood and longitood of it." "But that's just what I can't do, bosun," answered Billy. "I know what the latitude of it is, but the longitude's another matter.
What he wanted to do now was to make himself comfortable till the time come for him to go to Davy Jones's locker an' thinkin', most likely, that Davy couldn't make it any hotter fur him than it was on that deck, still in latitood nothin' at all, fur we'd been blowed along the line pretty nigh due west.
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