But on this strange voyage I was quite as much in the dark concerning our approximate position as any of the chaps who had never seen salt water before they viewed it from the bad eminence of the CACHALOT’s deck.  Of course, it was evident that we were bound eastward, but whether to the Indian seas or to the South Pacific, none knew but the skipper, and perhaps the mate.  I say “perhaps” advisedly.  In any well-regulated merchant ship there is an invariable routine of observations performed by both captain and chief officer, except in very big vessels, where the second mate is appointed navigating officer.  The two men work out their reckoning independently of each other, and compare the result, so that an excellent check upon the accuracy of the positions found is thereby afforded.  Here, however, there might not have been, as far as appearances went, a navigator in the ship except the captain, if it be not a misuse of terms to call him a navigator.  If the test be ability to take a ship round the world, poking into every undescribed, out-of-the-way corner you can think of, and return home again without damage to the ship of any kind except by the unavoidable perils of the sea, then doubtless he was a navigator, and a ripe, good one.  But anything cruder than the “rule-of-thumb” way in which he found his positions, or more out of date than his “hog-yoke,” or quadrant, I have never seen.  I suppose we carried a chronometer, though I never saw it or heard the cry of “stop,” which usually accompanies a.m. or p.m. “sights” taken for longitude.  He used sometimes to make a deliberate sort of haste below after taking a sight, when he may have been looking at a chronometer perhaps.  What I do know about his procedure is, that he always used a very rough method of equal altitudes, which would make a mathematician stare and gasp; that his nautical almanac was a ten-cent one published by some speculative optician is New York; that he never worked up a “dead reckoning;” and that the extreme limit of time that he took to work out his observations was ten minutes.  In fact, all our operations in seamanship or navigation were run on the same happy-go-lucky principle.  If it was required to “tack” ship, there was no formal parade and preparation for the manoeuvre, not even as much as would be made in a Goole billy-boy.  Without any previous intimation, the helm would be put down, and round she would come, the yards being trimmed by whoever happened to be nearest to the braces.  The old tub seemed to like it that way, for she never missed stays or exhibited any of that unwillingness to do what she was required that is such a frequent characteristic of merchantmen.  Even getting under way or coming to an anchor was unattended by any of the fuss and bother from which those important evolutions ordinarily appear inseparable.