What! thought I; have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are! Gudgeons and moles! I couldn't believe it.I went over the problem again, and verified it.Charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that evening.I told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for the Southern Cross.And when the stars came out, there shone the Southern Cross low on the horizon.Proud? No medicine man nor high priest was ever prouder.Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot Alpha Crucis and from its altitude worked out our latitude.And still furthermore, I shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with what had been told me by the Southern Cross.Proud? Why, the language of the stars was mine, and I listened and heard them telling me my way over the deep.
Proud? I was a worker of miracles.I forgot how easily I had taught myself from the printed page.I forgot that all the work (and a tremendous work, too) had been done by the masterminds before me, the astronomers and mathematicians, who had discovered and elaborated the whole science of navigation and made the tables in the "Epitome." I remembered only the everlasting miracle of it--that I had listened to the voices of the stars and been told my place upon the highway of the sea.Charmian did not know, Martin did not know, Tochigi, the cabin-boy, did not know.But I told them.I was God's messenger.I stood between them and infinity.Itranslated the high celestial speech into terms of their ordinary understanding.We were heaven-directed, and it was I who could read the sign-post of the sky!--I! I!
And now, in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem.And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation.
Now I must not be misunderstood.Seamanship is an entirely different matter.It is not learned in a day, nor in many days; it requires years.Also, navigating by dead reckoning requires long study and practice.But navigating by observations of the sun, moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and mathematicians, is child's play.Any average young fellow can teach himself in a week.
And yet again I must not be misunderstood.I do not mean to say that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge of a fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear sky or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making landfalls with most amazing precision.But what I do mean is just this: the average young fellow I have described can get into a staunch sail-boat and put out across the ocean, without knowing anything about navigation, and at the end of the week he will know enough to know where he is on the chart.He will be able to take a meridian observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation, with ten minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude.
And, carrying neither freight nor passengers, being under no press to reach his destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at any time he doubts his own navigation and fears an imminent landfall, he can heave to all night and proceed in the morning.
Joshua Slocum sailed around the world a few years ago in a thirty-seven-foot boat all by himself.I shall never forget, in his narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of young men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage.Ipromptly indorsed his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife along.While it certainly makes a Cook's tour look like thirty cents, on top of that, amid on top of the fun and pleasure, it is a splendid education for a young man--oh, not a mere education in the things of the world outside, of lands, and peoples, and climates, but an education in the world inside, an education in one's self, a chance to learn one's own self, to get on speaking terms with one's soul.Then there is the training and the disciplining of it.
First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his limitations; and next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those limitations.
