is near the south end.

After we passed it, for some time we steered north, and soon got into
warm weather again. You see the hot part of the world is midway between
the north and south pole, so sailing north from the south pole we find
it hotter and hotter, and so we do sailing south from the north pole.
We find our way over the sea, far away from land night or day, just as
well as on shore. Besides the sun and stars to guide us, we have the
compass. It is a wonderful thing, though it is so simple-looking; just
a round card, resting on a spike in a brass basin. In the card is a
long steel needle, and the point of it is rubbed with a stuff called
loadstone, and it takes the card round and round, and always points to
the north. The north, and all the other points, are marked on the card;
so when we look at it we see what way the ship's head is. The ship is
guided by a rudder, and a compass is placed just before the man who
steers, that is, turns the rudder--this way or that--so that he can look
at it, and know which way to turn the rudder, and so to keep the ship on
her course.

Then the shape of all parts of the world is mapped down on paper, and
the distances, that is to say, an inch on the paper, maybe, stands for
fifty miles, and so the captain knows where he is going, and how far he
has to go, though he has never been there before. We have a log line,
with marks on it, and by letting that run out astern we judge how fast
the ship is going; then the compass tells us the course she is steering,
that is, the way she is going, and that we call "dead reckoning." But
the captain has besides wonderful instruments of brass and glasses, and
he looks through them at the sun, or stars, and moon, and then he makes
sums on paper; and then he has some curious watches, which never go
wrong, and with them and his sums he can tell just where the ship is,
though we haven't seen land for six or eight weeks, or more. It is
curious to sail on day after day, and week after week, and not to see
land, and yet to know that it is all right, and that we shall reach the
very port we are bound for, unless we fall in with a storm, and lose our
masts, and get cast away, or spring a leak and founder; but then when we
come to think of the thousands of ships at sea, and that not one in a
hundred gets lost, we needn't count on that. So you understand, what
with the "dead reckoning," and the curious instruments I told you of--
one of them