ed, the skipper, feeling indisposed, had left me
to take the sun, knowing that the mate would check my calculations.

But, as things turned out, the altercation which occurred completely
took off the attention of Captain Billings from the subject; and, as I
left the chart which I had been using on the top of the cabin sky-light
when he ordered me to quit the poop without informing him of the serious
error I had discovered, and Mr Macdougall, wise in his own conceit and
confident that he and the dead reckoning were both right, did not hint
of the ship's course being wrong, on we went, with all our canvas
spread, racing into the teeth of a danger which the skipper never dreamt
of our being near.

The weather was now beautifully fine, the breeze tempering the heat of
the sun, and flying fish and albicore playing around the vessel as we
neared the equator; while, occasionally, a school of whales would spout
to windward, or a shoal of porpoises, having a game of high jinks as
they leaped out of the water in their graceful curves one after the
other, would cross our bows backwards and forwards in sport, apparently
mocking our comparatively slow progress through the sea in contrast to
their own rapid and graceful movements, and showing how easily they
could outstrip us when they so pleased.

I was standing on the fo'c's'le head, sadly looking out over the bows,
while the light lasted, at the moving panorama of Nature around me; the
dancing waves curled up on either side of the catheads as the vessel
plunged her forefoot down, and streaming aft in a long wake to leeward;
the cloudless sky above; the vast solitary expanse of the horizon; the
leaping fish and spouting whales--keenly alive to everything and yet my
mind full of all my grievances, being especially wrathful with the
skipper for accepting Mr Macdougall's statement against me, without
first allowing me to utter a word in my own defence.

It was worse than tyranny, I thought, this arbitrary conduct in
disrating me unjustly!

I remained here till I heard one bell strike soon after the second dog-
watch commenced; for I was waiting for Jorrocks to be relieved, as I
wished to speak to him in order to get him to put in a word for me with
Captain Billings, when he had calmed down and could listen to reason.
While I was waiting, the evening closed in, the sun having not long set;
for, in the tropics, night succeeds day with startling rapidity, there
being no twilight to