- end_line
- 777
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.534Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 734
- text
- My Viking secured, I felt more at ease; and thoughtfully considered how
the enterprise might best be accomplished.
There was no time to be lost. Every hour was carrying us farther and
farther from the parallel most desirable for us to follow in our route
to the westward. So, with all possible dispatch, I matured my plans,
and communicated them to Jarl, who gave several old hints—having
ulterior probabilities in view—which were not neglected.
Strange to relate, it was not till my Viking, with a rueful face,
reminded me of the fact, that I bethought me of a circumstance somewhat
alarming at the first blush. We must push off without chart or
quadrant; though, as will shortly be seen, a compass was by no means
out of the question. The chart, to be sure, I did not so much lay to
heart; but a quadrant was more than desirable. Still, it was by no
means indispensable. For this reason. When we started, our latitude
would be exactly known; and whether, on our voyage westward, we drifted
north or south therefrom, we could not, by any possibility, get so far
out of our reckoning, as to fail in striking some one of a long chain
of islands, which, for many degrees, on both sides of the equator,
stretched right across our track.
For much the same reason, it mattered little, whether on our passage we
daily knew our longitude; for no known land lay between us and the
place we desired to reach. So what could be plainer than this: that if
westward we patiently held on our way, we must eventually achieve our
destination?
As for intervening shoals or reefs, if any there were, they intimidated
us not. In a boat that drew but a few inches of water, but an
indifferent look-out would preclude all danger on that score. At all
events, the thing seemed feasible enough, notwithstanding old Jarl’s
superstitious reverence for nautical instruments, and the philosophical
objections which might have been urged by a pedantic disciple of
Mercator.
Very often, as the old maxim goes, the simplest things are the most
startling, and that, too, from their very simplicity. So cherish no
alarms, if thus we addressed the setting sun—“Be thou, old pilot, our
guide!”
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