He was like unto a god, and
he carried us in the hollow of his hand across the blank spaces on
the chart.
I experienced a great respect for Roscoe; this respect
grew so profound that had he commanded, "Kneel down and worship me,"
I know that I should have flopped down on the deck and yammered.
But, one day, there came a still small thought to me that said:
"This is not a god; this is Roscoe, a mere man like myself. What he
has done, I can do. Who taught him? Himself. Go you and do
likewise - be your own teacher." And right there Roscoe crashed, and
he was high priest of the Snark no longer. I invaded the sanctuary
and demanded the ancient tomes and magic tables, also the prayer-
wheel - the sextant, I mean.
And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself
navigation. One whole afternoon I sat in the cockpit, steering with
one hand and studying logarithms with the other. Two afternoons,
two hours each, I studied the general theory of navigation and the
particular process of taking a meridian altitude. Then I took the
sextant, worked out the index error, and shot the sun. The figuring
from the data of this observation was child's play. In the
"Epitome" and the "Nautical Almanac" were scores of cunning tables,
all worked out by mathematicians and astronomers. It was like using
interest tables and lightning-calculator tables such as you all
know.
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