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.