Take, if you please, the chart of that day Published at Madrid,--_por el Rey_; Look for a spot in the old South Sea, The hundred and eightieth degree Longitude, west of Madrid: there, Under the equatorial glare, Just where the East and West are one, You'll find the missing galleon,-- You'll find the "San Gregorio," yet Riding the seas, with sails all set, Fresh as upon the very day She sailed from Acapulco Bay. How did she get there? What strange spell Kept her two hundred years so well, Free from decay and mortal taint? What? but the prayers of a patron saint! A hundred leagues from Manilla town, The "San Gregorio's" helm came down; Round she went on her heel, and not A cable's length from a galliot That rocked on the waters, just abreast Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou-west. Then said the galleon's commandante, General Pedro Sobriente (That was his rank on land and main, A regular custom of Old Spain), "My pilot is dead of scurvy: may I ask the longitude, time, and day?" The first two given and compared; The third,--the commandante stared! "The _first_ of June? I make it second." Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly-reckoned; I make it _first_: as you came this way, You should have lost--d'ye see--a day; Lost a day, as plainly see, On the hundred and eightieth degree." "Lost a day?" "Yes: if not rude, When did you make east longitude?" "On the ninth of May,--our patron's day." "On the ninth?--_you had no ninth of May!_ Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"-- Too late; for the galleon bore away. Lost was the day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in the trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse; Wrecked was their patron's only day,-- What would the holy fathers say? Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,-- "Nothing is lost that you can regain: And the way to look for a thing is plain To go where you lost it, back again. Back with your galleon till you see The hundred and eightieth degree. Wait till the rolling year goes round, And there will the missing day be found; For you'll find--if computation's true-- That sailing _east_ will give to you Not only one ninth of May, but two,-- One for the good saint's present cheer, And one for the day we lost last year." Back to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelve-month, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree, She rose and fell on a tropic sea: But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save that day.