r to me.

"So I gave him orders to sail out of the harbor and straight to the
Island of Ushant, some twenty-five miles to the west of northwest.

"'There's no use going there,' said the captain,--his name was
Dork,--'there's nothing on that blasted bit of rock for you to see.
There's no port I could run this steamer into.'

"I had been studying out my business on the chart, and this little
island just suited my idea, and though the name was 'Ushant,' I said to
him, 'You shall,' and I ordered him to sail to that island and lay to a
mile or two to the westward; and as to the landing, he needn't talk
about that until I mentioned it myself.

"So when we got about a couple of miles to the west of Ushant, we lay
to. Now I knew we were on the forty-eighth parallel of latitude, for I
had looked that out on the chart, so I said to Captain Dork,--

"'Now, sir!' says I, 'I want you to head your vessel, sir, due west, and
then to steam straight ahead for a hundred miles, keepin' your vessel
just as near as you can on that line of latitude.'"

"I see!" said Mrs. Cliff, very much interested. "If he once got on that
line of latitude and kept sailing west without turning one way or the
other, he would be bound to keep on it."

"That's exactly it!" said Mr. Burke. "'Twas pretty near midnight when we
started off to run along the forty-eighth parallel, but I kept my eyes
on the man at the wheel and on the compass, and I let them know that
that ship was under the command of an able-bodied seaman who knew what
he was about, and if they skipped to one side of that line or to the
other he would find it out in no time.

"I went below once to take a nap, but, as I promised the fellow at the
wheel ten shillings if he would keep her head due west, and told him he
would be sure to wake me up if he didn't, I felt certain we wouldn't
skip the line of latitude.

"Well, that steamer, which was called the _Duke of Dorchester_, and
which was a vessel of not more than a thousand tons, wasn't much of a
sailer, or perhaps they was saving coal, I don't know which, and, not
knowing how much coal ought to be used, I kept my mouth shut on that
point; but I had the log thrown a good deal, and I found that we never
quite came up to ten knots an hour, and when we took an observation at
noon the next day, we saw that we hadn't quite done the hundred miles;
but a little before one o'clock we did it, and then I ordered the
captain to stop the engine and la