“Very good,” said the captain; “reel in.” Then to Breeze and Wolfe he said, "That shows that we are running at the rate of seven and a half knots, or miles, an hour. By heaving the log every hour, and keeping note of all the courses steered, we shall not only know pretty nearly the distance run, but can determine our position at the end of each sea, or nautical, day, which is at noon. This is called ‘dead-reckoning,’ and is useful as a check on observations, and also when on account of cloudy weather no observation can be taken. Of course, for such reckoning we must have some fixed point to start from, or ‘point of departure,’ as it is called. Ours in the present case is the point, back here a few miles, that we established by finding its latitude and longitude, and marking it on the chart. “There is one more thing to be thought of in our dead-reckoning, and that is the leeway. This may be caused by ocean currents, or by a beam wind, which not only acts upon the sails, so as to force the vessel ahead, but to a certain extent drives her sidewise. This must be allowed for, and every captain must use his own judgment to determine what leeway his vessel is making, and how much her course should be altered to allow for it. Now I am going to allow a couple of points for leeway, and instead of keeping her due west, Breeze, you may make it west-south-west.” “Ay, ay, sir!” answered Breeze, promptly; “west-sou’west,” and he altered the brig’s course slightly in obedience to these instructions. “At the same time,” continued the captain, “we shall mark the course on the chart, as though we were heading due west.” All this had been so interesting to the young sailors that, though already quite hungry again, they were almost sorry to hear Nimbus announce dinner just at this point. After dinner, and after Captain McCloud had rested for an hour in the cabin, the boys asked him to tell them how he escaped from his awful position in the forecastle of the capsized _Sea Robin_, and of his experiences, since that time. “Well,” he replied, “of course I will tell you the whole story; but I hate so to think of that time that I shall make my yarn as brief as possible.” “You left off,” said Breeze, “just where poor Dick Simonds had dived out of the forecastle, and you didn’t hear anything more of him.” "Yes, I remember. Well, as you can imagine, I felt badly enough in that place, all alone, with the water steadily gaining on me, and not the faintest hope of escaping. I would have followed Dick Simonds in a moment, but that I knew there was no chance of getting out that way. To do so would simply have been to commit suicide, and that has always seemed to me a pretty mean and cowardly way of escaping trouble.