Then I must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas.

The forenoon dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash, but an obliged experiment--rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that lands a fireman from a burning staircase.

Noon was made; the captain dined on his day's work, and I on watching him; and our place was entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me half pitiful and half absurd, since the next eye to behold that sheet of paper might be the eye of an exploring fish.

One o'clock came, then two; the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his.

God help the hand that should have disobeyed him.
Of a sudden, he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel.
"Two points on the port bow," I heard him say.