The Earthly Paradise (1940) aka To the Indies by C. S. Forester

Author:C. S. Forester [Forester, C. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Powieść historyczna
ISBN: 0140018166
Google: UEIRngEACAAJ
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1942-06-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

They had left behind them the Pearl Islands and the coast of Paria, and had turned boldly to the north-west towards Espanola. The wind blew steadily from the east—sometimes backing towards the north so that the ships could hardly hold their course, sometimes veering southerly so that, with the wind over her quarter, the Holy Name put on her best speed, the spray flying from her bluff bows in gorgeous rainbows. Dolphins accompanied them, leaping in the waves of the wake like children playing a game. At the mastheads the lookouts kept keen watch over these seas which no ship had ever sailed before, but they saw no shoals, no land, only the blue, clear water with the white wave crests in dazzling contrast. At noon the sun passed over their heads, so that a man’s shadow lay round his feet; at evening it sank into the sea, leaving the eastward sky already dark with night even while the glows of sunset still coloured the west.

Every hour they measured the speed of the ship through the water, chalking the figure on the board; at noontide, the Admiral, balanced stiffly on the heaving deck, took the altitude of the sun as best he could with his astrolabe, and at night that of the Pole Star as it peeped over the horizon, while the ship, hove-to, pitched steadily over the regular swell. In his great cabin the Admiral had a grubby parchment, cracked along its folds, on which some German philosopher had inscribed, with coloured pigments, the signs of the zodiac and the corresponding heights of the sun-the sun was in Leo now, and it should have been easy to calculate their distance from the equator. But Rich, observing the pendulum of the astrolabe, swinging uncontrollably with the heave of the ship, was not so sure; and even in those clear, vivid nights the vagueness of the horizon-as he discovered when he timidly handled the quadrant-made the altitude of the Pole Star an equally vague figure.

He mentioned his doubts in conversation with the Admiral; in his opinion they could not be certain of their latitude within five or six degrees, a hundred leagues or so. As for the other co-ordinate which would help them to fix their position-the longitude about which the Greek philosophers argued so glibly-he already knew the difficulty regarding that. With a compass of unknown variation, and with unknown currents deflecting them from their course, it seemed to Rich quite unlikely that they would ever see Espanola-they might miss even San Juan Bautista or Cuba, and arrive in China or some new discovered land. But so diplomatically did he express his doubts that the Admiral hardly guessed at them.

‘In five days,’ he said, ‘if the wind holds and no undiscovered land lies on our course, we shall sight Espanola.’

He looked up from the chart, in the dim light of the lanterns, and Rich could see the calm certainty of his expression. The Admiral had no doubt at all regarding his own ability in the practice of his art.

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