The first sea day would end at twelve o'clock on the morrow, when the log-slate would indicate the total of nautical miles the ship had run after taking her departure.
This is called her dead reckoning, which may be measured off on the chart, and should carry the vessel to the point indicated by the observations for latitude and longitude.
The wind was very light, and studding-sails were set alow and aloft.

The ship only made her six knots as she pitched gently in the long swell of the ocean.

The boys were still nominally under the order of "all hands on deck," but there was nothing for them to do, with the exception of the wheelmen, and they were gazing at the receding land behind them.
They were taking their last view of the shores of their native land.
Doubtless some of them were inclined to be sentimental, but most of them were thinking of the pleasant sights they were to see, and the exciting scenes in which they were to engage on the other side of the rolling ocean, and were as jolly as though earth had no sorrows for them.
The principal and the professors were pacing the quarter-deck, and doubtless some of them were wondering whether boys like the crew of the Young America could be induced to study and recite their lessons amid the excitement of crossing the Atlantic, and the din of the great commercial cities of the old world.

The teachers were energetic men, and they were hopeful, at least, especially as study and discipline were the principal elements of the voyage, and each pupil's privileges were to depend upon his diligence and his good behavior.

It would be almost impossible for a boy who wanted to go to Paris while the ship was lying at Havre, so far to neglect his duties as to forfeit the privilege of going.