At this last work Wolfe, having sailed before the mast on a square-rigged vessel, was more at home than Breeze, but the latter was quick to comprehend, and so learned easily; for a ready comprehension is more than half of learning. While the boys were thus employed Captain McCloud called Breeze to take the wheel, as it was nearly noon, and time to take his observation. Fortunately, amid all the trouble and disaster that had overtaken the brig, her chronometer had not been allowed to run down, and with the sextant, and other instruments belonging to her late captain, it was still in a serviceable condition. Bringing the sextant on deck, Captain McCloud gazed through it at the sun, as reflected in a small mirror, until it had reached its greatest altitude and stood exactly above the meridian, or, in other words, until it was noon. By looking at the chronometer, which was set to Greenwich time, the difference between the noon where they then were and Greenwich noon was found to be three hours and twenty-six minutes, or two hundred and six minutes. As the earth revolves from west to east at the rate of one degree--which at the equator is sixty miles--every four minutes, the whole number of minutes divided by four gave fifty-one and a half, or 51° 30´, as the longitude of the brig west from Greenwich. The latitude of the place--its distance north or south from the equator--was obtained by another observation of the sun, taken with the sextant, for the purpose of finding the angle between it and the zenith, or point directly overhead. A glance at the _Nautical Almanac_ under the date of that day, and a minute’s figuring, gave the required result. The latitude thus found was 43° 37´, and of course, being north of the equator, it was north latitude, or 43° 37´ north. Having obtained these two figures, Captain McCloud got out a chart of that portion of the Atlantic, and drawing on it a fine north and south line through meridian of longitude 51° 30´ west, and a delicate east and west line to indicate parallel of latitude 43° 37´ north, he made a small cross at their point of intersection, and showed it to Breeze as the position of the brig at that moment. It was very near the southern point of the Grand Bank and almost due east from Gloucester, but over eight hundred miles from that port. “There!” said Captain McCloud when he had finished these operations, in all of which Breeze had been greatly interested. “If we steer due west, and hold this wind, we ought to sight Sable Island by day after to-morrow, and run into port inside of three days more. How would that suit you, my boy?” “It seems as though I couldn’t wait for the time to come, father. Won’t it be glorious to sail into Gloucester harbor and take everybody by surprise? But, father, while we are on this cruise I wish you would teach me something of navigation. I never saw an observation taken before. They don’t take them on board fishing schooners, do they?”