After which, weighing anchor again, we worked out of the Sound, having to tack twice before clearing the breakwater; and, resuming our passage we passed the Lizard the same afternoon, being some ten or twelve miles to the southward of the Bishop's Rock in the Scilly Isles at midnight. I noticed the bright, star-like light of the latter, low down on the horizon, away on our weather quarter, only just dimly discernible in the distance through the haze, when I came on deck for the middle watch, the lighthouse looking to me as if twinkling to us a last farewell from home and the land we had left, never, perhaps, to see again. But, although we made fair enough progress, we were not able to preserve as straight a course as Captain Farmer and the master would have liked to have done. The wind was continually on the shift and trying to head us, thus causing us to keep the ship away and steer more to the southward; instead of making all the westering we could when leaving the channel, so as to give Cape Ushant, with its erratic currents and treacherous indraught, as wide a berth as possible--the French coast being a bad lookout under one's lee at any time! However, we had to make the best we could of the wind we had; and by noon next day, when Mr Quadrant took the sun, having all of us round him on the poop, cadets as well as midshipmen, on the alert to watch for the dip and mark off the angle on our sextants, we were found to be in latitude 48 degrees 50 minutes North, and longitude 7 degrees 35 minutes West, showing that we had run some two hundred miles or so since leaving Plymouth Sound. After observing the sun's altitude, we were supposed to work out the reckoning for ourselves independently of each other; though, when the master sent us down to the gunroom to do this, the lazy hands amongst us, who were by a long way in the majority, cribbed from those who were readier at figures, like Larkyns and Ned Anstruther, both of whom arrived at the same result as Mr Quadrant, ay even in a shorter time, handing in their papers for inspection before I had well-nigh begun mine. "Here, Vernon, take my log and copy it out," cried Larkyns, seeing me somewhat puzzled over the calculations I was making by the aid of a fat volume of logarithm tables and Roper's "Navigator"; "you look considerably fogged, old chappie, by the cut of your jib." "No thank you," I replied, all on my mettle, determined not to be beat. "I want to try and make it out by myself, so that I shall know how to do it next time." "Bravo, youngster," put in Mr Stormcock. "That's the only way to become a good navigator. Fudging your reckoning will never teach you how to work out your altitudes; you stick to it, my boy, and do it on your own hook."