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Updated: June 6, 2025
Some are known to you, such as the thermometer, which gives the internal temperature of the Nautilus; the barometer, which indicates the weight of the air and foretells the changes of the weather; the hygrometer, which marks the dryness of the atmosphere; the storm-glass, the contents of which, by decomposing, announce the approach of tempests; the compass, which guides my course; the sextant, which shows the latitude by the altitude of the sun; chronometers, by which I calculate the longitude; and glasses for day and night, which I use to examine the points of the horizon, when the Nautilus rises to the surface of the waves."
"Really, madam, I cannot tell; but it is my duty to inquire," replied the colonel, who, going up to Captain Drawlock, commenced "Have the ladies already so fallen in your estimation " "Forty degrees!" cried Captain Drawlock, who was intent upon his sextant. "Excuse me, sir, just now." "When will you be at leisure, sir?" resumed the colonel, haughtily.
And there were gray days, too, which only served to make more golden the sun-kissed ones; days when no observations could be taken with the sextant, to the huge disgust of the officer in charge of such work; days when the distant mountains loomed spectre-like through the mist, their sharp outlines vignetted into the sky.
It was very neatly and comfortably, though not extravagantly, furnished a standing bedplace, with a commodious chest of drawers beneath it, on the starboard side, being balanced by a book-case with drawers for charts on the port side, together with a sort of cabinet in which the ship's chronometers and the captain's sextant were kept.
After receiving a visit from the celebrated Peter Ramus, who subsequently fell a victim at the massacre of St Bartholomew, Tycho left Augsburg, having received a promise from his friend Hainzel that he would communicate to him the observations made with his large quadrant, and with the sextant which he had given him in a present.
Bynoe, surgeon; Mr. Forsyth, mate; George Knox, Robert Gower, and William Willing, seamen; John Brown, and Richard Martin, marines. Besides provisions for six days, and arms, we had with us the following instruments: large sextant, small sextant, artificial horizon, chronometer, two compasses, spyglass, watch, lantern, and measuring tape.
I had already taken the altitude of Vega, and deduced the latitude to be 32 degrees 3 minutes 23 seconds S.; leaving my artificial horizon on the ground outside whilst I remained in the tent waiting until Altair came to the meridian, I then took my sextant and went out to observe this star also; but upon putting down my hand to take hold of the horizon glass in order to wipe the dew off, my fingers went into the quick-silver the horizon glass was gone, and also the piece of canvass I had put on the ground to lie down upon whilst observing so low an altitude as that of Vega.
The pipe was at length finished, and then the smoker, with the same deliberation which had characterised his former movements, once more applied the sextant to his eye. "Well," shouted Johnson, "what news of the stranger aloft there?" "Gaining on us, hand over fist," was the reply. "That'll do then; you may as well come down," snarled the pirate skipper.
But I think this: we are too prone to view the handiwork of our sires with contempt. I do not know but that their ships were as fast as ours. They made many good passages. They might have proved themselves fleeter navigators had they had the sextant and chronometer to help them along.
With his craft at his fingers' ends, Luke had that instinct of navigation by which some men seem to find their way upon the trackless waters. There are sailors who are no navigators just as there are hunting men who cannot ride. There are navigators who will steer you from London to Petersburg without taking a sight, from the Thames to the Suez Canal without looking at their sextant.
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