All was plain again.The Snark was in 19 degrees south latitude.
The world wasn't as big around there as at the equator.Therefore, every mile of westing at 19 degrees south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the equator.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, Ibrought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M.Then Iprojected 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.Also, he wanted to fight; and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone.
