George Francis Train broke Jules
Verne's record of around the world. But any man that wants can
break George Francis Train's record. Such a man would need only to
go, in a fast steamer, to the latitude of Cape Horn, and sail due
east all the way around. The world is very small in that latitude,
and there is no land in the way to turn him out of his course. If
his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would circumnavigate the
globe in just about forty days.
But there are compensations. On Wednesday evening, June 10, I
brought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I
projected the Snark's course and saw that she would strike Futuna,
one of the easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two
thousand feet high that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the
course so that the Snark would pass ten miles to the northward.
Then I spoke to Wada, the cook, who had the wheel every morning from
four to six.
"Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-
bow you see land."
And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my
reputation as a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak
there was no land. Then, where would my navigation be? And where
would we be? And how would we ever find ourselves? or find any
land? I caught ghastly visions of the Snark sailing for months
through ocean solitudes and seeking vainly for land while we
consumed our provisions and sat down with haggard faces to stare
cannibalism in the face.
I confess my sleep was not
" . . . like a summer sky
That held the music of a lark."
Rather did "I waken to the voiceless dark," and listen to the
creaking of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as
the Snark logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my
calculations again and again, striving to find some mistake, until
my brain was in such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes.
Suppose, instead of being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation
was all wrong and that I was only six miles off? In which case my
course would be wrong, too, and for all I knew the Snark might be
running straight at Futuna. For all I knew the Snark might strike
Futuna the next moment. I almost sprang from the bunk at that
thought; and, though I restrained myself, I know that I lay for a
moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the shock.
My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the
favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who
persisted in dunning me throughout the night.
