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careful lest you damage the source of light and put the day out?”
    Willis laughed noisily.
    “You are roasting me, sir,” he said. “Even a landlubber I ask your pardon knows what shooting the sun is.”
    “I forgive you that ‘even’, sir! When shall I see you do so?”
    “Take an observation, sir? Why, at noon, in a few minutes . There will be Mr Smiles, the sailing master, Mr Davies and Mr Taylor, the other two midshipmen sir, though Mr Davies does not really know how to do it for all that he is so old and Mr Taylor my friend, I beg you will not mention it to the Captain, has a sextant that does not work owing to his having pawned the one that his father gave him. So we have agreed to take turn with mine and give altitudes that are two minutes different.”
    I put my hand to my forehead.
    “And the safety of the whole hangs by such a spider’s thread!”
    “Sir?”
    “Our position, my boy! Good God, we might as well be in the hands of my young brothers! Is our position to be decided by an antique midshipman and a sextant that does not work?”
    “Lord, no, sir! In the first place Tommy Taylor and I believe we may persuade Mr Davies to swap his good one for Tommy’s instrument. It would not really matter to Mr Davies you see. Besides, sir, Captain Anderson, MrSmiles and some other officers are also engaged in the navigation.”
    “I see. You do not merely shoot the sun. You subject him to a British Broadside! I shall watch with interest and perhaps take a hand in shooting the sun too as we roll round him.”
    “You could not do that, sir,” said Willis in what seemed a kindly way. “We wait here for the sun to climb up the sky and we measure the angle when it is greatest and take the time too.”
    “Now look, lad,” said I. “You are taking us back into the Middle Ages! You will be quoting Ptolemy at me next!”
    “I do not know of him, sir. But we must wait while the sun climbs up.”
    “That is no more than an apparent movement,” said I patiently. “Do you not know of Galileo and his ‘Eppur si muove?’ The earth goes round the sun! The motion was described by Copernicus and confirmed by Kepler!”
    The lad answered me with the purest simplicity, ignorance and dignity.
    “Sir, I do not know how the sun may behave among those gentlemen ashore but I know that he climbs up the sky in the Royal Navy.”
    I laughed again and laid my hand on the boy’s shoulder .
    “And so he shall! Let him move as he chooses! To tell you the truth, Mr Willis, I am so glad to see him up there with the snowy clouds about him that he may dance a jig for all I care! Look—your companions are gathering. Be off with you and aim your instrument!”
    He thanked me and dived away. I stood on the aftermost part of the fo’castle and looked back at the ceremony which, I own, pleased me. There was a number of officers on the quarterdeck. They waited on the sun, the brasstriangles held to their faces. Now here was a curious and moving circumstance. All those of the ship’s people who were on deck and some of the emigrants too, turned and watched this rite with silent attention. They could not be expected to understand the mathematics of the operation. That I have some notion of it myself is owing to education , an inveterate curiosity and a facility in learning. Even the passengers, or those of them on deck, stood at gaze. I should not have been surprised to see the gentlemen lift their hats! But the people, I mean the common sort, whose lives as much as ours depended on an accuracy of measurement beyond their comprehension and the application of formulae that would be as opaque to them as Chinese writing, these people, I say, accorded the whole operation a respect such as they might have paid to the solemnest moment of a religious service. You might be inclined to think as I did that the glittering instruments were their Mumbo Jumbo. Indeed, Mr Davies’s ignorance and Mr Taylor’s defective instrument were feet of clay;