more than I can tell. The
longitude he must either have obtained by the Rule of Three, or else by special
revelation. Not that the chronometer in the cabin was seldom to be relied on, or
was any ways fidgety; quite the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by that
means, no doubt, the true Greenwich time - at the period of its stopping, at
least - was preserved to a second.
    The mate, however, in addition to his Dead Reckoning, pretended to ascertain
his meridian distance from Bow Bells by an occasional lunar observation. This, I
believe, consists in obtaining, with the proper instruments, the angular
distance between the moon and some of the stars. The operation generally
requires two observers to take sights, at one and the same time.
    Now, though the mate alone might have been thought well calculated for this,
inasmuch as he generally saw things double, the doctor was usually called upon
to play a sort of second quadrant to Jermin's first; and what with the capers of
both, they used to furnish a good deal of diversion. The mate's tremulous
attempts to level his instrument at the star he was after, were comical enough.
For my own part, when he did catch sight of it, I hardly knew how he managed to
separate it from the astral host revolving in his own brain.
    However, by hook or by crook, he piloted us along; and before many days, a
fellow sent aloft to darn a rent in the fore-top-sail, threw his hat into the
air, and bawled out, »Land ho!«
    Land it was; but in what part of the South Seas, Jermin alone knew, and some
doubted whether even he did. But no sooner was the announcement made, than he
came running on deck, spy-glass in hand, and clapping it to his eye, turned
round with the air of a man receiving indubitable assurance of something he was
quite certain of before. The land was precisely that for which he had been
steering; and, with a wind, in less than twenty-four hours we would sight
Tahiti. What he said was verified.
    The island turned out to be one of the Pomotu or Low Group - sometimes
called the Coral Islands - perhaps the most remarkable and interesting in the
Pacific. Lying to the east of Tahiti, the nearest are within a day's sail of
that place.
    They are very numerous; mostly small, low, and level; sometimes wooded, but
always covered with verdure. Many are