"Sextant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dirty and thumb-worn, paper-covered ledger that was the log of the Charming Lass and had been the log of the old May Schofield for ten years before she went down. It was the one thing he had saved. He had been on deck, taken his sextant observation, and just completed ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... second expedition is at an end, and those of my readers who have followed my wanderings are perhaps as glad to arrive at the end as I was. I may truly say that for nearly twelve months I had been the well-wrought slave not only of the sextant, the compass, and the pen, but of the shovel, the axe, and the needle also. There had been a continual strain on brain and muscle. The leader of such an expedition as this could not stand by and simply give orders for certain work to be performed; he must join in it, and with the good example of ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... ocean and across it, while at her utmost speed she marked with her keel still slowly the sea that carried her. On the forty-third day from land,—a long time to be at sea alone,—the sky being beautifully clear and the moon being "in distance" with the sun, I threw up my sextant for sights. I found from the result of three observations, after long wrestling with lunar tables, that her longitude by observation agreed within five ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... proceeded, armed with a sextant, to take the height of the sun, which would give him ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... 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 is called a sextant—the captain can take his ship right across the pathless ocean, just as easily as a coachman does his coach along a high-road. You see sailors on shore, and they seem often harum-scarum, idle fellows, but at sea everything is done with the greatest order, ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... 1874, when the writer was crossing the Pacific Ocean in H.M.S. "Scout," Coggia's comet unexpectedly appeared, and (while Colonel Tupman got its positions with the sextant) he tried to use the prism out of a portable direct-vision spectroscope, without success until it was put in front of the object-glass of a binocular, when, to his great joy, the three band ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... a revolver, a hunting knife, and some fishing tackle; one three and a quarter by four and a quarter folding pocket kodak, one panorama kodak, a sextant and artificial horizon, a barometer, a thermometer. I wore a short skirt over knickerbockers, a short sweater, and a belt to which were attached my cartridge pouch, revolver, and hunting knife. My hat was a rather narrow brimmed soft felt. I had one pair ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... visit to the missionary bark, the Star of Hope, which was then in port at Apia. He was shown into their chart room and looked at their instruments, upon which he remarked, "I am a better Christian than you are, for you have two chronometers and a sextant, while I have only my belief in God and an old clock." When asked why he didn't take a sheep or some chickens along with him to eat as a relief from his constant diet of canned goods, he said, "You can't kill a fellow-passenger. Out in the great stillness you get fond even ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... be reduced accordingly. Nansen therefore gave the reduced latitude in his book, but he considers that his horizon was very clear when he took that observation, and believes that his latitude was higher than that given. He used a sextant and the natural horizon. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... passionately fond of reading), by observation, and by listening to those people who know how to hold my attention. I listened with all my ears and all my heart to the Abbe Dupanloup, when he gave me religious instruction; to Pouillet, when he taught us physical science; to the great Arago, when he put a sextant into my hands for the first time in my life. Later on, to Michelet, when I attended the course of historical lectures he gave to my sister Clementine; and later yet, to the lessons on law which were given us by M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent over an ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Samuel got a hundred and fifty pounds of bread, with a small quantity of rum and wine, also a quadrant and compass; but he was forbidden, on pain of death, to touch either map, ephemeris, book of astronomical observations, sextant, time-keeper, or any of my ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... of articles had been left: three half bags of reindeer containing a miscellaneous assortment of mitts and sleeping-socks, very various in description, a sextant, a Norwegian artificial horizon and a hypsometer without boiling-point thermometers, a sextant and hypsometer of English make. 'Left a note to say I had visited the tent with companions. Bowers photographing and ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Capt. E.T. Morton. A short treatise on the simpler methods of finding position at sea by the observation of the sun's altitude and the use of the sextant and chronometer. It is arranged especially for yachtsmen and amateurs who wish to know the simpler formulae for the necessary navigation involved in taking a boat anywhere off ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt |
