aid on deck most of the time,
standing around the smoke-stack when our noses got a little blue with
the cold. There were not many other people on deck. I was expecting
young Rectus to have his turn at sea-sickness, but he disappointed me.
He spent a good deal of his time calculating our position on a little
folding-map he had. He inquired how fast we were going, and then he
worked the whole thing out, from Sandy Hook to Savannah, marking on the
map the hours at which he ought to be at such and such a place. He tried
his best to get his map of the course all right, and made a good many
alterations, so that we were off Cape Charles several times in the
course of the day. Rectus had never been very good at calculations, and
I was glad to see that he was beginning to take an interest in such
things.

The next morning, just after day-break, we were awakened by a good deal
of tramping about on deck, over our heads, and we turned out, sharp, to
see what the matter was. Rectus wanted me to wait, after we were
dressed, until he could get out his map and calculate where we were, but
I couldn't stop for such nonsense, for I knew that his kind of
navigation didn't amount to much, and so we scrambled up on deck. The
ship was pitching and tossing worse than she had done yet. We had been
practising the "sea-leg" business the day before, and managed to walk
along pretty well; but this morning our sea-legs didn't work at all, and
we couldn't take a step without hanging on to something. When we got on
deck, we found that the first officer, or mate,--his name was
Randall,--with three or four sailors, was throwing the lead to see how
deep the water was. We hung on to a couple of stays and watched them. It
was a rousing big lead, a foot long, and the line ran out over a pulley
at the stern. A sailor took the lead a good way forward before he threw
it, so as to give it a chance to get to the bottom before the steamer
passed over it and began to tow it. When they pulled it in, we were
surprised to see that it took three men to do it. Then Mr. Randall
scooped out a piece of tallow that was in a hollow in the bottom of the
lead, and took it to show to the captain, whose room was on deck. I knew
this was one way they had of finding out where they were, for they
examined the sand or mud on the tallow, and so knew what sort of a
bottom they were going over; and all the different kinds of bottom were
marked out on their charts.

As Mr. Randall pa