uch
that is at present obsolete was then in full sway. For instance, the old
word _larboard_ was still in use. He was a member of the _larboard_
watch. The vessel was on the _larboard_ tack. It was only the other
day, because of its similarity in sound to starboard, that _larboard_ was
changed to _port_. Try to imagine "All larboard bowlines on deck!" being
shouted down into the forecastle of a present day ship. Yet that was the
call used on the _Pilgrim_ to fetch Dana and the rest of his watch on
deck.

The chronometer, which is merely the least imperfect time-piece man has
devised, makes possible the surest and easiest method by far of
ascertaining longitude. Yet the _Pilgrim_ sailed in a day when the
chronometer was just coming into general use. So little was it depended
upon that the _Pilgrim_ carried only one, and that one, going wrong at
the outset, was never used again. A navigator of the present would be
aghast if asked to voyage for two years, from Boston, around the Horn to
California, and back again, without a chronometer. In those days such a
proceeding was a matter of course, for those were the days when dead
reckoning was indeed something to reckon on, when running down the
latitude was a common way of finding a place, and when lunar observations
were direly necessary. It may be fairly asserted that very few merchant
officers of to-day ever make a lunar observation, and that a large
percentage are unable to do it.

"Sept. 22nd., upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning we found
the other watch aloft throwing water upon the sails, and looking astern
we saw a small, clipper-built brig with a black hull heading directly
after us. We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the
brig which we could get upon her, rigging out oars for studding-sail
yards; and contined wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up
to the mast-head . . . She was armed, and full of men, and showed no
colours."

The foregoing sounds like a paragraph from "Midshipman Easy" or the
"Water Witch," rather than a paragraph from the soberest, faithfullest,
and most literal chronicle of the sea ever written. And yet the chase by
a pirate occurred, on board the brig _Pilgrim_, on September 22nd,
1834--something like only two generations ago.

Dana was the thorough-going type of man, not overbalanced and erratic,
without quirk or quibble of temperament. He was efficient, but not
brilliant. His