rifted to the eastward, of where they had last been set.

Then all at once Mr Fosset sang out.

"It's just noon, sir, now. The sun's crossing the meridian!"

"All right, make it so," replied the skipper. "Bos'un, strike eight
bells."

"Aye, aye, sir," came back from old Masters away forward, and then
followed the melodious chime of the ship's bell that hung immediately
under the beak of the fo'c's'le. "Ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting,
ting-ting."

"Now," going into the wheel-house, "let us look at the chronometer and
see what Greenwich time says, and then tot up our reckonings!"

The two others followed him into the little room on the bridge, sitting
down to a table in which the track chart of the ship's course lay, and
all were busy for some few moments calculating and working out our
latitude and longitude.

I was standing by the doorway after bringing up the correct time of the
chronometers, which the skipper kept locked up in his own cabin to
prevent their being meddled with, and I could see he looked puzzled,
adding up and subtracting his figures over and over again, as if he
thought he must have made some error, though he found that he invariably
came to the same result.

"Well, Fosset," he cried at length, unable to restrain himself any
longer. "What do you make it?"

"39 deg. 20 minutes north latitude sir, and 47 deg. 15 minutes west longitude."

"Faith, an' I make it the same, sir," also put in Garry O'Neil, the
twain having worked out the reckoning long before the poor skipper.
"Both of us agree to the virry minnit, sure, lavin' out the sicconds,
sir!"

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper. "It's even worse than I thought."

"How, sir?" asked Mr Fosset with a smile on his face, no doubt
chuckling to himself at being cleverer and wiser than Captain
Applegarth, who would not believe we were in the Gulf Stream. "Don't
you think us right, sir?"

"Oh, yes, Fosset; I agree with you myself. The _reckoning_ is right
enough, but father's the devil to pay!"

The skipper couldn't sacrifice the joke, though he was terribly put out.

"See here," he continued, "jabbing," with great noise and force the
compasses with which he was measuring off our position, into the chart,
as if that was in fault, while Fosset and O'Neil laughed. "Look where
we are! I shouldn't have thought it possible for us to have been driven
so far south, right into the Gulf Stream, as we are, for the current
generally runs to t