I worked out the problem, self-
instructed, and learned what star of the first magnitude would be
passing the meridian around half-past eight.
This star proved to be
Alpha Crucis. I had never heard of the star before. I looked it up
on the star map. It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross.
What! thought I; have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the
sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are! Gudgeons and
moles! I couldn't believe it. I went over the problem again, and
verified it. Charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that
evening. I told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for
the Southern Cross. And when the stars came out, there shone the
Southern Cross low on the horizon. Proud? No medicine man nor high
priest was ever prouder. Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot
Alpha Crucis and from its altitude worked out our latitude. And
still furthermore, I shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with
what had been told me by the Southern Cross. Proud? Why, the
language of the stars was mine, and I listened and heard them
telling me my way over the deep.
Proud? I was a worker of miracles. I forgot how easily I had
taught myself from the printed page. I forgot that all the work
(and a tremendous work, too) had been done by the masterminds before
me, the astronomers and mathematicians, who had discovered and
elaborated the whole science of navigation and made the tables in
the "Epitome." I remembered only the everlasting miracle of it -
that I had listened to the voices of the stars and been told my
place upon the highway of the sea. Charmian did not know, Martin
did not know, Tochigi, the cabin-boy, did not know. But I told
them. I was God's messenger. I stood between them and infinity. I
translated the high celestial speech into terms of their ordinary
understanding. We were heaven-directed, and it was I who could read
the sign-post of the sky! - I! I!
And now, in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity
of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of
the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they,
secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to
say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary
education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get
the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation.
Now I must not be misunderstood. Seamanship is an entirely
different matter. It is not learned in a day, nor in many days; it
requires years. Also, navigating by dead reckoning requires long
study and practice. But navigating by observations of the sun,
moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and mathematicians, is
child's play. Any average young fellow can teach himself in a week.
And yet again I must not be misunderstood. I do not mean to say
that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge of a
fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through
the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear
sky or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making
landfalls with most amazing precision. But what I do mean is just
this: the average young fellow I have described can get into a
staunch sail-boat and put out across the ocean, without knowing
anything about navigation, and at the end of the week he will know
enough to know where he is on the chart. He will be able to take a
meridian observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation,
with ten minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude.
And, carrying neither freight nor passengers, being under no press
to reach his destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at
any time he doubts his own navigation and fears an imminent
landfall, he can heave to all night and proceed in the morning.
Joshua Slocum sailed around the world a few years ago in a thirty-
seven-foot boat all by himself. I shall never forget, in his
narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of
young men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage. I
promptly indorsed his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife
along. While it certainly makes a Cook's tour look like thirty
cents, on top of that, amid on top of the fun and pleasure, it is a
splendid education for a young man - oh, not a mere education in the
things of the world outside, of lands, and peoples, and climates,
but an education in the world inside, an education in one's self, a
chance to learn one's own self, to get on speaking terms with one's
soul. Then there is the training and the disciplining of it.
First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his limitations; and
next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those limitations.
And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger and
better man. And as for sport, it is a king's sport, taking one's
self around the world, doing it with one's own hands, depending on
no one but one's self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space,
and saying, "I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear
around that whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any
nurse of a sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not
fly to other stars, but of this star I myself am master."
As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the
beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu.
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