We soon found by the signs above us that we were entering the northern
hemisphere. One evening we saw, just above the horizon, two stars
of “The Dipper.” It was several nights before the North Star came up
the watery hill. The poet Spenser probably had never sailed in these
latitudes when he wrote of the North Star as never being below the
horizon:--
“By this, the Northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that on the wide deepe wandering arre.”[61]
But at last it came up, dripping wet, and inspired in us the hope of
soon watching it from our windows at home.