CHAPTER XV SEASICKNESS

The following morning at quarters, as an easterly breeze had sprung up during the night, it was announced that the ship would sail immediately after “mast”, which would be at a quarter of ten. This meant another opportunity for the “B. M.’s” to see how well they could handle their sections in getting under way; and, as soon as “mast” was over, Jack called Ellsworth and the two other boatswain’s mates together to remind them of the details of their jobs. Then he went over and talked with Bertie Young, the master-at-arms.

“Look, Bertie,” said he, “don’t let any lubbers loiter down below after the call for getting under way has been sounded.”

“Sure, Jack,” said Bertie, “I’ll be on the job.”

Meantime the sky had become overcast, and the wind had freshened, and it still blew from the northeast as it had done the day before. While going over the masthead, the boys noticed quite heavy clouds near the horizon. There was also more moisture in the air, and everything looked as if a northeaster were making up its mind to visit the coast. The wind, however, was not strong enough to warrant taking in any reefs, and the _Bright Wing_ sailed briskly away from her anchorage with a motion that gradually increased as they cleared the harbor. The lee scuppers were all under water by this time and no mistake, and the vessel flew like a gull when the wind catches its outspread wings and carries it along without resistance. The tide was running out, also, and they slipped off so quickly that an hour later, when the boys were looking back at the shore, the familiar spires and headlands had almost disappeared in the distance.

The manœuvre of getting under way had been carried out as smoothly as the last time, and now the master-at-arms was busy warning the smaller and greener boys off the lee rail.

“The weather’s too cold for a bath this morning, you lubbers; and, besides, the Captain doesn’t want to stop her headway to pick you up,” cried Bertie. “Gee, what a spanking breeze!”

Now and then a boy might be noticed lingering at the foot of the foremast stays to leeward, looking intently at the water, and then coming back with a wistful look upon his face. As time went on, these little visits seemed to become more frequent; and then Mr. Miller and Mr. Wentworth were observed by the Chairman tucking boys away in different corners of the deck wrapped up in their blankets; and these blanketed bundles of boys deposited in the more sheltered nooks began to increase until there were half a dozen or more scattered about in different places.

Just then Jones passed along and said to one of the boys with a jeer: “Seasick, eh! I thought so!”

“No, _sir_!” answered Chip, “I _was_ sick, but I’m feeling better. Next time she goes about, I think I’ll take a hand with the rest of them.”

“Ready about! Hard-a-lee!” rang out across the deck.

Chippie jumped to his feet in an instant.

“Gee,” muttered he, “but that was a short tack,” and ran to report to his “B. M.”

“That’s good, Chippie,” said Ellsworth, “you take hold right here,” and in another minute the _Bright Wing_ gave a spring and was off again on the port tack.

Harold French and Randall Turner were the two “B. M.’s” of the second division, and they both began cheering up their invalids and pointing to Chippie, who was right as a trivet, though his face still looked a little paler than usual.

At mess inspection there were only three boys missing; but some of those who had begun to feel well as long as they were on deck, asked suddenly to be excused before the end of dinner, and scrambled up the ladder into the fresh air as fast as they could. In the meantime Bertie Young, the master-at-arms, had given cups of broth to the patients who had remained on deck, and was urging them to chew some pieces of hard tack.

“Put something into your stomachs, boys, and that will make them feel more homelike.”

They were all feeling better by this time, and Dick Gray called out, lifting his head from underneath his blanket:

“Say, fellows, here’s a conundrum for you: Which would you rather do,--feel all O.K. ashore, or sick as a boiled owl at sea?”

“Gee,” growled out a voice from another gray blanket, “I know what answer I’d a’ given to that two hours ago, but it’s different now! So, here goes, fellows,” and he jumped to his feet. “I call for three times three cheers for the _Bright Wing_ and ‘being sick at sea!’”

The other two also sprang to their feet; and, as the Captain and Mr. Miller were coming up on deck, they heard, to their surprise, the sounds of the cheering, “Rah, Rah, Rah--Rah, Rah, Rah--Rah, Rah, Rah--Sea Scouts--Sea Scouts--Sea Scouts--Bright Wing, Bright Wing, Bright Wing--S-i-c-k a-t S-e-a!”

A roar of laughter followed from the former patients of the hospital ward, and it was so contagious that it reached way forward to the galley where the mess cooks were washing up after dinner.

“See here, we’re not all through yet,” cried Dick, as a new blanketed figure lay down. Chippie noticed the pale face of Jones.

“Can I get you anything, Jones?” asked Chippie innocently.

“No,” answered Jones, with a groan and sour face.

“He doesn’t feel as perky as he did,” thought Chippie to himself, with a grin.

There was always a “band concert” of half an hour after dinner when the ship was at sea; and, under the influence of the music from the Victrola, the last remnants of squeamishness disappeared, except in the case of poor old Jones.

“Pride comes before a fall,” said Dick to Chippie; “I guess he’d have done better to own up before.”

Some of the huskies even tried dancing up and down on the windward side of the deck. The wind also seemed to be backing round to the westward, and the motion of the waves was not quite so lively.

Mr. Wentworth was Officer of the Day; and, after the band concert and dance were over, the Chairman and Mr. Miller went below. Mr. Wilson, the mate, was at the wheel giving some of the older boys a spell from time to time, and the Captain had already gone below to write some letters.

After Turner, French, and Perkins each had been at the wheel for about twenty minutes, the lookout shouted, “Light-ho!”

The mate immediately responded in a loud singing voice, “Wh-e-r-e--away?”

“Three points off the port bow!” came the answer from the lookout.

“Can you make her out?” called the mate.

And the lookout sang back, “I think it’s Whale’s Back Light, sir.”

Just then the cry, “Messenger!” was heard coming up through the cabin companionway, and Sidney Malloy, who was the messenger on duty, came running aft to answer the summons.

“Messenger, sir,” said he, as he saluted, standing beside the Chairman’s bunk.

“Oh! Sidney, is that you?” said the Chairman, “are there any more sick boys on deck?”

“No, sir,” answered Sidney, “only one; but a few of ’em look a little green-like, sir.”

“Who are they?”

“Well, sir, there’s Dickie Gray and Chip Smith--they don’t seem to be quite first-rate yet, sir.”

“Send Gray down to me,” said the Chairman, who then got out of his bunk and took his coat down from the bulkhead.

There was a sound of running feet on the deck, for the messenger always did his errands on the run, and, in another minute, Dick was in the cabin.

“You sent for me, sir?”

“Yes,” said the Chairman, “sit down there on the locker a minute. How far are we from ‘Whale’s Back’?”

“The lookout has just reported ‘Whale’s Back’ in sight, sir.”

“Really,” said the Chairman, “that is very interesting; because now you can tell me how far we are from Portsmouth Harbor.”

“How is that, sir?” asked Dick.

“Well, if you don’t know, I can tell you in a few minutes; and then you can pass it on to some of the other boys. Go and ask the yeoman to give you a plumb line and half-circle, and then bring it here to me.”

Dick ran off very much interested and found the yeoman writing a letter on the berth deck.

“Say, Bob,” said Dick, “what’s a half-circle and plumb line? Have you got one?”

“Sure,” answered Bob, “what do you want it for?”

“The old man has just sent me down to get it. Hurry up there, quick.”

Bob Brackett, as yeoman of the ship, besides being always responsible for carrying the mail, had charge of the stationery, postage stamps, games, and instruction material; and now he dove down into one corner of his yeoman’s locker and pulled out a board shaped like a half-circle with a straight edge or diameter of eight inches.

“There’s the board,” said he, and tossed it on the table; “the plumb line seems to have gone adrift.”

Then, after rummaging a little longer, he called out:

“Here it is,” and handed Dick a leaden sinker fastened to a string.

“Now wait a minute,” said Bob, “and I’ll tack the string on for you. You see it’s got to be fastened just in the right place,--at the center of the straight edge.”

He fastened the string down with a thumb tack, and then Bob took it and ran aft again to the cabin.

“Have you had anything about angles and circles at school, Gray?” asked the Chairman.

“Yes, sir, but I don’t remember much about ’em.”

“Well, I guess you’ll remember enough to understand what I am going to tell you.”

Then he pointed out the degree marks that ran along the curved edge of the half circular board.

“Now if you hold the board up with the straight edge on top and horizontal, you’ll notice that the plumb line falls at right angles to the horizontal line and, at the edge of the circumference, passes through a point marked zero--but you must have seen a thing like this before, haven’t you? It’s what they call a ‘protractor.’”

“I’ve seen something like it, I think, sir, but I never understood what it was for.”

“Well,” said the Chairman, “you’ll see now how easy it is to understand, when you put your mind to it! This point marked zero that the plumb line passes through when the straight edge is horizontal, is exactly in the middle of the curved edge of the semicircumference. Now, from zero along the curve to the end of the straight edge, on both sides of zero, are ninety little points marking ninety degrees, making two halves of a semicircle, or in other words, one-half of a whole circle of 360 degrees.

“If you hold the straight edge of the board up to your eye and move the further end upward from the horizon, while keeping the center steady, the plumb line moves away from zero toward your body, and at the same time along the face of the semicircle, and registers a certain number of degrees from zero. If you imagine yourself standing in the middle of a circle, you can also imagine a lighthouse or a church steeple at the circumference of the circle. This distance to the circumference will be the radius. Then imagine that radius held fast at your end, but swinging upward and pointing to the sky. It will measure ninety degrees when it is pointing straight up from where you are standing to a point in the heavens directly above your head, and forty-five degrees when pointing to a place in the sky half-way between the horizon and a point directly above, and less than forty-five degrees when pointing to a place in the sky nearer the horizon. The straight edge of this board represents the direction of the sight line, or radius; and, as you tip the end up above the horizon until it reaches the top of the tower or steeple you are measuring, the same number of degrees will be registered by the plumb line at the bottom of the board, counting from zero, as the line appears to move toward yourself. Now, if you are holding your board with your right hand, just put the finger of your left hand on the plumb line to keep it in place while you look to see what it registers,--this way,” and the Chairman went through the motion with his hands.

“Thank you, sir,” said Dick, “I understand that very well, but I don’t see how it gives the distance to the lighthouse.”

“No,” replied the Chairman, “of course not, and that is just where the most interesting part of the operation comes in. I have shown you how to measure the height of your lighthouse in degrees along the edge of a circumference; and now we must find out how to measure the distance of the lighthouse, or the radius of the circle, from the center where we are standing, to the point in the circumference where the lighthouse stands.”

Dick looked up with interest and said, “I don’t see, sir, how that can be done, because we want the distance in miles or yards, and there is nothing to show us the number of miles or yards in a degree.”

“That’s true,” said the Chairman, “but happily for us, some old fellow a long time ago had a bright idea. He knew that, in every circle, the length of the radius is always in the same proportion to the length of the circumference, and so he laid out a line equal in length to the radius along the circumference, and found that it was equal to a little more than 57 degrees. Supposing, then, that you found your lighthouse to be four degrees above the horizon, you could then calculate what fraction of the length of the radius the height of your tower is by finding the number of times that four is contained in 57. Let me see,--that would be about 14-1/4, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so, sir,” said Dick.

“Now,” continued the Chairman, “if your lighthouse is 300 feet high, this 300 feet will be the same part of the distance as 4 degrees is of 57 degrees. But 4 goes into 57, 14-1/4 times; therefore, the length of the distance will be 300 feet × 14-1/4, which is 4,275 feet, or about four-fifths of a mile.”

“Oh, I see,” cried Dick, “but how do we find out the height of the lighthouse?”

“That’s a good question,” said the Chairman; “we can’t find the distance unless the height is given, and for that reason the heights of lighthouses and other conspicuous objects are usually given on the charts. But, if we knew our distance from the lighthouse, we could easily find its height by similar reasoning.”

Just then the Captain, who had been writing at the cabin table, looked up and said: “I’ll show you the chart, Gray--I don’t just remember the height of ‘Whale’s Back’,” and he reached out for the chart of Portsmouth Harbor, which was rolled up in its place on the cabin bulkhead. When he had unrolled it he showed Dick the figures.

“Thank you, sir,” said Dick. “Mr. Chairman, is there any time when you’d like me to report about this?”

“Come and speak to me, right after ‘colors’,” replied the Chairman.

Dick saluted and climbed up on deck as quickly as he could. He felt a kind of new opening in his brain, and was keen on making his observation and calculation as soon as possible. Every trace of seasickness had vanished.