FINDING ONE’S WAY ABOUT
“But,” our friends objected, “how dare you go to sea without a
navigator on board? You’re not a navigator, are you?”
I had to confess that I was not a navigator, that I had never looked
through a sextant in my life, and that I doubted if I could tell a
sextant from a nautical almanac. And when they asked if Roscoe was a
navigator, I shook my head. Roscoe resented this. He had glanced at the
“Epitome,” bought for our voyage, knew how to use logarithm tables, had
seen a sextant at some time, and, what of this and of his seafaring
ancestry, he concluded that he did know navigation. But Roscoe was
wrong, I still insist. When a young boy he came from Maine to
California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and that was the only time
in his life that he was out of sight of land. He had never gone to a
school of navigation, nor passed an examination in the same; nor had he
sailed the deep sea and learned the art from some other navigator. He
was a San Francisco Bay yachtsman, where land is always only several
miles away and the art of navigation is never employed.
So the _Snark_ started on her long voyage without a navigator. We beat
through the Golden Gate on April 23, and headed for the Hawaiian
Islands, twenty-one hundred sea-miles away as the gull flies. And the
outcome was our justification. We arrived. And we arrived, furthermore,
without any trouble, as you shall see; that is, without any trouble to
amount to anything. To begin with, Roscoe tackled the navigating. He
had the theory all right, but it was the first time he had ever applied
it, as was evidenced by the erratic behaviour of the _Snark_. Not but
what the _Snark_ was perfectly steady on the sea; the pranks she cut
were on the chart. On a day with a light breeze she would make a jump
on the chart that advertised “a wet sail and a flowing sheet,” and on a
day when she just raced over the ocean, she scarcely changed her
position on the chart. Now when one’s boat has logged six knots for
twenty-four consecutive hours, it is incontestable that she has covered
one hundred and forty-four miles of ocean. The ocean was all right, and
so was the patent log; as for speed, one saw it with his own eyes.
Therefore the thing that was not all right was the figuring that
refused to boost the _Snark_ along over the chart. Not that this
happened every day, but that it did happen. And it was perfectly proper
and no more than was to be expected from a first attempt at applying a
theory.
The acquisition of the knowledge of navigation has a strange effect on
the minds of men. The average navigator speaks of navigation with deep
respect. To the layman navigation is a deed and awful mystery, which
feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for
navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have
known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn
navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and
self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual
attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of
some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator
invites one in to look at his chronometer. And so it was that our
friends suffered such apprehension at our sailing without a navigator.
During the building of the _Snark_, Roscoe and I had an agreement,
something like this: “I’ll furnish the books and instruments,” I said,
“and do you study up navigation now. I’ll be too busy to do any
studying. Then, when we get to sea, you can teach me what you have
learned.” Roscoe was delighted. Furthermore, Roscoe was as frank and
ingenuous and modest as the young men I have described. But when we got
out to sea and he began to practise the holy rite, while I looked on
admiringly, a change, subtle and distinctive, marked his bearing. When
he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent
flame. When he went below, figured out his observation, and then
returned on deck and announced our latitude and longitude, there was an
authoritative ring in his voice that was new to all of us. But that was
not the worst of it. He became filled with incommunicable information.
And the more he discovered the reasons for the erratic jumps of the
_Snark_ over the chart, and the less the _Snark_ jumped, the more
incommunicable and holy and awful became his information. My mild
suggestions that it was about time that I began to learn, met with no
hearty response, with no offers on his part to help me. He displayed
not the slightest intention of living up to our agreement.
Now this was not Roscoe’s fault; he could not help it. He had merely
gone the way of all the men who learned navigation before him. By an
understandable and forgivable confusion of values, plus a loss of
orientation, he felt weighted by responsibility, and experienced the
possession of power that was like unto that of a god. All his life
Roscoe had lived on land, and therefore in sight of land. Being
constantly in sight of land, with landmarks to guide him, he had
managed, with occasional difficulties, to steer his body around and
about the earth. Now he found himself on the sea, wide-stretching,
bounded only by the eternal circle of the sky. This circle looked
always the same. There were no landmarks. The sun rose to the east and
set to the west and the stars wheeled through the night. But who may
look at the sun or the stars and say, “My place on the face of the
earth at the present moment is four and three-quarter miles to the west
of Jones’s Cash Store of Smithersville”? or “I know where I am now, for
the Little Dipper informs me that Boston is three miles away on the
second turning to the right”? And yet that was precisely what Roscoe
did. That he was astounded by the achievement, is putting it mildly. He
stood in reverential awe of himself; he had performed a miraculous
feat. The act of finding himself on the face of the waters became a
rite, and he felt himself a superior being to the rest of us who knew
not this rite and were dependent on him for being shepherded across the
heaving and limitless waste, the briny highroad that connects the
continents and whereon there are no mile-stones. So, with the sextant
he made obeisance to the sun-god, he consulted ancient tomes and tables
of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded
like _Indexerrorparallaxrefraction_, made cabalistic signs on paper,
added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the
Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space
conspicuous for its blankness and said, “Here we are.” When we looked
at the blank space and asked, “And where is that?” he answered in the
cipher-code of the higher priesthood, “31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west.”
And we said “Oh,” and felt mighty small.
So I aver, it was not Roscoe’s fault. He was like unto a god, and he
carried us in the hollow of his hand across the blank spaces on the
chart. I experienced a great respect for Roscoe; this respect grew so
profound that had he commanded, “Kneel down and worship me,” I know
that I should have flopped down on the deck and yammered. But, one day,
there came a still small thought to me that said: “This is not a god;
this is Roscoe, a mere man like myself. What he has done, I can do. Who
taught him? Himself. Go you and do likewise—be your own teacher.” And
right there Roscoe crashed, and he was high priest of the _Snark_ no
longer. I invaded the sanctuary and demanded the ancient tomes and
magic tables, also the prayer-wheel—the sextant, I mean.
And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself
navigation. One whole afternoon I sat in the cockpit, steering with one
hand and studying logarithms with the other. Two afternoons, two hours
each, I studied the general theory of navigation and the particular
process of taking a meridian altitude. Then I took the sextant, worked
out the index error, and shot the sun. The figuring from the data of
this observation was child’s play. In the “Epitome” and the “Nautical
Almanac” were scores of cunning tables, all worked out by
mathematicians and astronomers. It was like using interest tables and
lightning-calculator tables such as you all know. The mystery was
mystery no longer. I put my finger on the chart and announced that that
was where we were. I was right too, or at least I was as right as
Roscoe, who selected a spot a quarter of a mile away from mine. Even he
was willing to split the distance with me. I had exploded the mystery,
and yet, such was the miracle of it, I was conscious of new power in
me, and I felt the thrill and tickle of pride. And when Martin asked
me, in the same humble and respectful way I had previously asked
Roscoe, as to where we were, it was with exaltation and spiritual
chest-throwing that I answered in the cipher-code of the higher
priesthood and heard Martin’s self-abasing and worshipful “Oh.” As for
Charmian, I felt that in a new way I had proved my right to her; and I
was aware of another feeling, namely, that she was a most fortunate
woman to have a man like me.
I couldn’t help it. I tell it as a vindication of Roscoe and all the
other navigators. The poison of power was working in me. I was not as
other men—most other men; I knew what they did not know,—the mystery of
the heavens, that pointed out the way across the deep. And the taste of
power I had received drove me on. I steered at the wheel long hours
with one hand, and studied mystery with the other. By the end of the
week, teaching myself, I was able to do divers things. For instance, I
shot the North Star, at night, of course; got its altitude, corrected
for index error, dip, etc., and found our latitude. And this latitude
agreed with the latitude of the previous noon corrected by dead
reckoning up to that moment. Proud? Well, I was even prouder with my
next miracle. I was going to turn in at nine o’clock. I worked out the
problem, self-instructed, and learned what star of the first magnitude
would be passing the meridian around half-past eight. This star proved
to be Alpha Crucis. I had never heard of the star before. I looked it
up on the star map. It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross.
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. I translated 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. I promptly 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. And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger
and better man. And as for sport, it is a king’s sport, taking one’s
self around the world, doing it with one’s own hands, depending on no
one but one’s self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space, and
saying, “I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear around that
whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any nurse of a
sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not fly to other
stars, but of this star I myself am master.”
As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the
beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the
trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep
sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the
reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still
nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and
showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and
over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a
magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all this, and through the
white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a
man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the
top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins
in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a
quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when
I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and
pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as
he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it. And the
picture of that coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes
another reason for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond
the Baths of Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.
But to return. Please do not think that I already know it all. I know
only the rudiments of navigation. There is a vast deal yet for me to
learn. On the _Snark_ there is a score of fascinating books on
navigation waiting for me. There is the danger-angle of Lecky, there is
the line of Sumner, which, when you know least of all where you are,
shows most conclusively where you are, and where you are not. There are
dozens and dozens of methods of finding one’s location on the deep, and
one can work years before he masters it all in all its fineness.
Even in the little we did learn there were slips that accounted for the
apparently antic behaviour of the _Snark_. On Thursday, May 16, for
instance, the trade wind failed us. During the twenty-four hours that
ended Friday at noon, by dead reckoning we had not sailed twenty miles.
Yet here are our positions, at noon, for the two days, worked out from
our observations:
Thursday
20°
57′
9″
N
152°
40′
30″
W
Friday
21°
15′
33″
N
154°
12′
The difference between the two positions was something like eighty
miles. Yet we knew we had not travelled twenty miles. Now our figuring
was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the
observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires
practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the
_Snark_. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer’s
eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up
a mile off is liable to steal the horizon away.
But in our particular case there was another perturbing factor. The
sun, in its annual march north through the heavens, was increasing its
declination. On the 19th parallel of north latitude in the middle of
May the sun is nearly overhead. The angle of arc was between
eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees. Had it been ninety degrees it
would have been straight overhead. It was on another day that we
learned a few things about taking the altitude of the almost
perpendicular sun. Roscoe started in drawing the sun down to the
eastern horizon, and he stayed by that point of the compass despite the
fact that the sun would pass the meridian to the south. I, on the other
hand, started in to draw the sun down to south-east and strayed away to
the south-west. You see, we were teaching ourselves. As a result, at
twenty-five minutes past twelve by the ship’s time, I called twelve
o’clock by the sun. Now this signified that we had changed our location
on the face of the world by twenty-five minutes, which was equal to
something like six degrees of longitude, or three hundred and fifty
miles. This showed the _Snark_ had travelled fifteen knots per hour for
twenty-four consecutive hours—and we had never noticed it! It was
absurd and grotesque. But Roscoe, still looking east, averred that it
was not yet twelve o’clock. He was bent on giving us a twenty-knot
clip. Then we began to train our sextants rather wildly all around the
horizon, and wherever we looked, there was the sun, puzzlingly close to
the sky-line, sometimes above it and sometimes below it. In one
direction the sun was proclaiming morning, in another direction it was
proclaiming afternoon. The sun was all right—we knew that; therefore we
were all wrong. And the rest of the afternoon we spent in the cockpit
reading up the matter in the books and finding out what was wrong. We
missed the observation that day, but we didn’t the next. We had
learned.
And we learned well, better than for a while we thought we had. At the
beginning of the second dog-watch one evening, Charmian and I sat down
on the forecastle-head for a rubber of cribbage. Chancing to glance
ahead, I saw cloud-capped mountains rising from the sea. We were
rejoiced at the sight of land, but I was in despair over our
navigation. I thought we had learned something, yet our position at
noon, plus what we had run since, did not put us within a hundred miles
of land. But there was the land, fading away before our eyes in the
fires of sunset. The land was all right. There was no disputing it.
Therefore our navigation was all wrong. But it wasn’t. That land we saw
was the summit of Haleakala, the House of the Sun, the greatest extinct
volcano in the world. It towered ten thousand feet above the sea, and
it was all of a hundred miles away. We sailed all night at a seven-knot
clip, and in the morning the House of the Sun was still before us, and
it took a few more hours of sailing to bring it abreast of us. “That
island is Maui,” we said, verifying by the chart. “That next island
sticking out is Molokai, where the lepers are. And the island next to
that is Oahu. There is Makapuu Head now. We’ll be in Honolulu
to-morrow. Our navigation is all right.”