It was with feelings of awe, not unmingled with fear, that I now seated
myself on the cabin skylight and gazed upon the rigid features of my
late comrade, while my mind wandered over his past history and
contemplated with anxiety my present position. Alone, in the midst of
the wide Pacific, having a most imperfect knowledge of navigation, and
in a schooner requiring at least eight men as her proper crew! But I
will not tax the reader's patience with a minute detail of my feelings
and doings during the first few days that followed the death of my
companion. I will merely mention that I tied a cannon-ball to his feet,
and, with feelings of the deepest sorrow, consigned him to the deep.
For fully a week after that a steady breeze blew from the east, and as
my course lay west and by north, I made rapid progress towards my
destination. I could not take an observation, which I very much
regretted, as the captain's quadrant was in the cabin; but from the day
of setting sail from the island of the savages I had kept a dead
reckoning, and as I knew pretty well now how much leeway the schooner
made, I hoped to hit the Coral Island without much difficulty. In this
I was the more confident that I knew its position on the chart (which I
understood was a very good one), and so had its correct bearings by
compass.
As the weather seemed now quite settled and fine, and as I had got into
the trade-winds, I set about preparations for hoisting the top-sails.
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