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- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.149Z
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- 2119
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- CHAPTER XVII.
THE CORAL ISLANDS
How far we sailed to the westward after leaving the Marquesas, or what
might have been our latitude and longitude at any particular time, or
how many leagues we voyaged on our passage to Tahiti, are matters about
which, I am sorry to say, I cannot with any accuracy enlighten the
reader. Jermin, as navigator, kept our reckoning; and, as hinted
before, kept it all to himself. At noon, he brought out his quadrant, a
rusty old thing, so odd-looking that it might have belonged to an
astrologer.
Sometimes, when rather flustered from his potations, he went staggering
about deck, instrument to eye, looking all over for the sun—a
phenomenon which any sober observer might have seen right overhead. How
upon earth he contrived, on some occasions, to settle his latitude, is
more than I can tell. The longitude he must either have obtained by the
Rule of Three, or else by special revelation. Not that the chronometer
in the cabin was seldom to be relied on, or was any ways fidgety; quite
the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by that means, no doubt, the
true Greenwich time—at the period of stopping, at least—was preserved
to a second.
The mate, however, in addition to his “Dead Reckoning,” pretended to
ascertain his meridian distance from Bow Bells by an occasional lunar
observation. This, I believe, consists in obtaining with the proper
instruments the angular distance between the moon and some one of the
stars. The operation generally requires two observers to take sights,
and at one and the same time.
Now, though the mate alone might have been thought well calculated for
this, inasmuch as he generally saw things double, the doctor was
usually called upon to play a sort of second quadrant to Jermin’s
first; and what with the capers of both, they used to furnish a good
deal of diversion. The mate’s tremulous attempts to level his
instrument at the star he was after, were comical enough. For my own
part, when he did catch sight of it, I hardly knew how he managed to
separate it from the astral host revolving in his own brain.
However, by hook or by crook, he piloted us along; and before many
days, a fellow sent aloft to darn a rent in the fore-top-sail, threw
his hat into the air, and bawled out “Land, ho!”
Land it was; but in what part of the South Seas, Jermin alone knew, and
some doubted whether even he did. But no sooner was the announcement
made, than he came running on deck, spy-glass in hand, and clapping it
to his eye, turned round with the air of a man receiving indubitable
assurance of something he was quite certain of before. The land was
precisely that for which he had been steering; and, with a wind, in
less than twenty-four hours we would sight Tahiti. What he said was
verified.
The island turned out to be one of the Pomotu or Low Group—sometimes
called the Coral Islands—perhaps the most remarkable and interesting in
the Pacific. Lying to the east of Tahiti, the nearest are within a
day’s sail of that place.
They are very numerous; mostly small, low, and level; sometimes wooded,
but always covered with verdure. Many are crescent-shaped; others
resemble a horse-shoe in figure. These last are nothing more than
narrow circles of land surrounding a smooth lagoon, connected by a
single opening with the sea. Some of the lagoons, said to have
subterranean outlets, have no visible ones; the inclosing island, in
such cases, being a complete zone of emerald. Other lagoons still, are
girdled by numbers of small, green islets, very near to each other.
The origin of the entire group is generally ascribed to the coral
insect.
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