The Stowaway

XV

"Captain," Eliza called, announcing her presence.

Captain Buckley looked up from the lens and frowned when he saw her, before his gaze softened when he realised what she was doing. "I was just about to fetch some supper. You needn't have worried."

Eliza pursed her lips. "You are welcome then," she muttered.

Captain Buckley stopped himself, exhaling, before adding, "Thank you."

"What is that thing you are looking through?" Eliza asked curiously.

Captain Buckley looked down at the instrument in his hands. "This? It is a sextant."

"What does it do?"

Captain Buckley took one of the bowls of stew from Eliza. She then dropped to the deck, crossing her legs, and the captain tentatively followed suit, sitting opposite her. "How do you think I track our position?" he asked her. "I use a sextant to help me navigate by the stars."

Eliza could not help but hold her mouth agape. She had never heard anyone explain something that sounded so difficult as though it was as easy as counting to three. Eliza then looked up and took in the vastness that was the heavens. "How could you possibly know how to do that?" she gasped.

"You learn," replied Captain Buckley simply. "I learned when I was nought but ten or eleven years old," he continued. He placed his bowl of stew on the deck beside him and held up the sextant to Eliza. "A sextant simply measures the angle between two objects." He moved the arm of the sextant along a hemispherical shaped piece of the device. "But looking through the telescope and adjusting the mirrors," he instructed, pointing to the mirrors, "I can discern the angle between the horizon and objects in the sky, which can thus tell me our exact location."

Eliza truly had no idea how a person could do that. "How do you know what objects are in the sky?"

"I have spent most of my life on a ship, Eliza," he murmured. "One acquaints themselves with the heavens quite frequently. At any given instant of time, celestial objects, like the moon," he said, pointing up at the bright, full moon, "will be located over a particular part of the earth. I know this because I have spent nearly two decades looking up and understanding where these objects will be. By measuring the angle of that object in relation to the earth, I can discern our exact geographic location."

In her books, all the pirates used were compasses to tell them which way to go. Eliza had no idea sailors had to be so terribly clever. She had no idea that sailors could read the sky, read the stars like a book. The moon, which she had never known to be anything but a light in the sky, could really help a sailor know exactly where he was in the vastness of the ocean.

"Because of this tool, I know that we will reach our first port tomorrow afternoon, and when you wake up in the morning, you will sight the British Virgin Islands in the distance."

Eliza snapped out of her awe and was quickly brought back to earth and reminded of what she had intended to speak with the captain about. "The British Virgin Islands," she repeated. "A British port ... with British ships."

The captain nodded stoically, his expression unreadable. He said nothing about finding her passage.

"Would I be able to write a letter, do you think? Would there be a ship to take it back for me ... if I am not able to find a passenger ship."

He frowned, showing confusion, before it quickly vanished. "A letter?" he repeated. "To whom?"

"My family, of course," Eliza clarified. "My parents, my sister ..." Oh, Eliza knew Katy would be so angry with her. She could not even begin to fathom her mother's ire.