When you came up to town the other day from that place in the country--West something or other ?" "Westham, sir," I suggested; "that's where we live." "Well, then," he went on, accepting my correction with a smile, "when you were telling your adventures and stated that you came from Westham to London in three hours, say, you would not include the time you had taken in going from the door of your house to the garden gate and from thence to the little town or village whence you started by the railway-- eh ?" "No, sir," said I, laughing at his way of putting the matter.

"I would mean from the station at Westham to the railway terminus in London." "Just so," he answered; "and, similarly, we sailors in estimating the length of a voyage, do not take into consideration our passage along the river and down channel, only counting our distance from the last point of land we see of the country we are leaving and the first we sight of that we're bound to.

Our first day's run, therefore, will be what we get over from the Lizard up to the time the cap'en takes the sun at noon to-morrow, which will tell us our latitude and longitude then, when, by the aid of this fixed starting-point or `point of departure,' and calculating our dead reckoning and courses steered, we will be enabled to know our precise position on the chart." "I see, sir," said I.

"I won't forget what you've told me another time, and shall know in future what the term means, sir, thank you." "You're quite welcome, Graham," he replied pleasantly as he resumed his walk up and down the deck, with an occasional glance to windward and a look at the compass in the binnacle to see that the helmsman was keeping the ship on the course the captain had directed before going below a short time before--west-sou'-west, and as close up to the wind as we could sail, so as to avoid the French coast and get well across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay into the open Atlantic.

"I hope to make a good navigator of you in time, my boy." "I hope so, too, sir," said I, trying to keep pace with his measured tread, although I always got out of step as he turned regularly at the end of his walk, which was backwards and forwards between the cabin skylight and the binnacle.