"Sextant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment, Mr. Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin, but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while he went on deck with his sextant to "take the sun." It was getting toward noon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude. When he returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men had retreated out into the lobby. Through the open door he had a view of the captain lying easy against the ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... curious feeling of despondency came over me, a feeling which grew worse as I passed through the city, and then along the water-side streets, where there were shops displaying tarpaulins, canvas, and ropes; others dealing in ships' stores; and again others whose windows glittered with compass, sextant, and patent ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... may be. But who knows much about that?" said the second officer, setting his sextant. "You say we're slumbering over a volcano. I daresay we are. It's more or less what we're paid to do, and take all risks. Things are quiet ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... occasionally smuggled off to Persia and Arabia. It has always been a matter of great wonder to me how the navigators of little vessels find their way from port to port, as they do, without the aid of either compass or sextant, and how they manage to weather the terrible storms that at certain seasons of the year suddenly visit eastern seas. I remember once coming across a dhow becalmed in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and its crew making signals ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... a collection of objects inviting prompt attention. Each moment he could see with greater distinctness. Kneeling on one side of the little pile he discerned that on a large stone, serving as a rude bench, were some tin utensils, some knives, a sextant, and a quantity of empty cartridge cases. Between the stone and what a miner terms the "face" of the rock was a four-foot space. Here, half imbedded in the sand which covered the floor, were two pickaxes, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... said Beechnut. "My father had no such clock, in point of fact. He put his money in a bag, his bag in his chest, and his chest in the hold, and it came as safe as the captain's sextant." ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... under topsails, a bad equipment of canvas with which to claw off a lee shore. The lee shore developed at daylight of the fourth stormy morning, a dim blue heightening of the horizon to the east, dead ahead; and Captain Williams, who had been unable to get a sight with his sextant for six days, could only determine that his dead reckoning, based upon the wild steering of his crew, had brought him too far to the north, and that the land he saw was ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... take it from me. Of this I was convinced from the way in which they pulled up all the vegetables in my garden and carried off everything of value which they found in the hut. Among other articles were my sextant, chronometer, and nautical almanacks, which I had brought in my chest from the Dolphin, though unable to use them on board the privateer till the day I spoke of. The chronometer I had carefully ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... I stepped inside, gazing about in surprise. It was nearly twice the size of my own apartment, containing a wide single berth, several comfortable upholstered chairs, and a large desk, on which stood a sextant, besides several charts, one unrolled. To my left, close against the side of the vessel was a narrow door standing ajar, and through the opening I caught sight ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... to teach me navigation, and, as I had learnt mathematics at school, I was soon able to take a good observation with my sextant and to work out the calculations correctly. A knowledge of seamanship I found was not to be obtained so rapidly, though Crowfoot, the boatswain, was always ready to give me instruction and express ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... which institution I had promised to present all specimens of fauna and flora I might collect during my journey. I had two sets of instruments for astronomical observation and for use in surveying (one of which had been furnished me by the Royal Geographical Society), such as the six-inch sextant, hypsometrical apparatus for measuring heights, with boiling-point thermometers specially constructed for very great altitudes; two aneroids, one to 20,000 feet, the other to 25,000 feet; three artificial horizons (one mercury, the others plate-glass with levels); a powerful ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish, for if you do, hopes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... I had not left my sextant behind me in the hurry of departure," said the Captain that evening to Leo. "But we came off in such hot haste that I forgot it. However, I'll ask Amalatok to send a young man back for it. I'm persuaded we cannot now be more than a few ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... while the "Talbot" acted as a rear guard. Our ship started out first. The Captain of the "Eclipse" sent the height of his mast back to our Captain and we kept the distance constantly by the officer of the deck reading off the proper angle with the sextant. In and out our line threaded, and then began to zig-zag, until by-and-bye we were out of sight of Gaspe Cape and all ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... be taken in things nautical. The sextant, compass, and log were the cause of much discussion, and the usual bets were made on the daily run, the stakes being held by ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... but pretty nearly so," said Will. "I had entertained the belief, presumptuous if you will, that I could find my way in any part of the wilderness by means of a sextant and pocket compass, and, to say truth, I don't feel quite sure that I should have failed, but before I had a sufficient opportunity of testing my powers, one of our baggage horses rolled down the bank of a creek and broke my sextant. In trying to save him I rolled down along with him and ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... there were many round balls of ironstone, like marbles or round shot, strewed about. A red ferruginous crust projected from the highest part, and, on this summit, the magnetic needle was greatly affected by local attraction, and quite useless. Fortunately, I had also my pocket sextant, and with it took some valuable angles. On descending, I heartily enjoyed a breakfast, and named the hill which gave us the water, Mount Aquarius. Returning towards Mount Owen, by a more direct route, I arrived at the head of a gully which led tolerably direct until we found our track, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... instructed, when the readings were complete, "you will each calculate our position independently. I'll check your work when you have finished." He replaced his sextant in its case, then headed the small ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... point C by reading the angle A C B alone, as such point might be amywhere on the circumference of a circle of which A B was the chord. The usual and more accurate method of determining the position of a floating object from the object, itself, or from a boat alongside, is by taking angles with a sextant, or box-sextant, between three fixed points on shore in two operations. Let A B C, Fig. 41, be the three fixed points on shore, the positions of which are measured and recorded upon an ordnance map, or checked if they are already there. Let D be the floating ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... an old friend of mine,' said my father, 'and I haven't seen him for some little while now. About four months ago he borrowed of me a sextant, quadrant, and chronometer. They were instruments I took from old Captain Barney in payment of some work I did for him. I wasn't usin' them, and Williamson had bought a catboat and was studying navigation; but he has given up that fad now and has promised me over ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... decent lass, like yourself, Christie, and we'll sail in company all our lives, let the wind blow high or low." Such is the gracious Flucker become in his twentieth year. Last voyage, with Christie's aid, he produced a sextant of his own, and "made it twelve o'clock" (with the sun's consent, I hope), and the eyes of authority fell upon him. So, who knows? perhaps he may one day, sail a ship; and, if he does, he will be prouder and happier than if we made him ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... uneventful voyage of three months, the astronomer landed on St. Helena, with his sextant of five and a half feet radius, and a telescope 24 feet long, and forthwith plunged with ardour into his investigation of the southern skies. He met, however, with one very considerable disappointment. The climate of this island had been represented ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... observatory work or the making of astronomical observations. A coast survey observer had once let me look through his transit instrument and try to observe the passage of a star. On the eclipse expedition mentioned in the last chapter I had used a sextant. This was about all the experience in practical astronomy which I could claim. In fact I had never been inside of an observatory, except on two or three occasions at Cambridge as a visitor. The captain reassured me by saying that no great experience ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... from the observatory: Cook at once demanded from the chiefs that it should be returned, but they paid no attention. The thief, however, was pointed out, seized, and taken on board ship; the sextant was recovered, but Cook says, finding the thief to be "a hardened scoundrel, I punished him with greater severity than I have ever done any one before, and then dismissed him." He is said to have had his head shaved and his ears cut off, but Gilbert (midshipman on the Discovery) says this was ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... before leaving this part of the record, that the comet of 1843 was suspected of behaving in a rather strange way when near the sun. For the first observation, made rather roughly, indeed, with a sextant, by a man who had no idea of the interest his observation might afterward have, could not be reconciled by mathematicians (including the well-known mathematician, Benjamin Pierce) with the movement of the comet as subsequently observed. It seemed as though when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... To arrange an instrument for use and observation; as, to adjust a sextant, or the escapement of a chronometer. To set ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... likewise Balestriglia, being the Venetian name for the cross- staff, or fore-staff, an astronomical instrument which has been superseded by the quadrant and sextant.—E ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the journey Sir George had his sextant, but, having to walk hungry and thirsty, he needed to walk light. Therefore he hid the sextant in a tree, where many a year later it was found, a rustic relic, by some settlers. Death raced him so hard that he eased the burden of keeping in ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... 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 ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... and after a fatiguing march of twelve miles, reached Bray, a watering place. Endeavoured to take the meridional altitude of the sun, by the back observation with Troughton's pocket sextant; and after carefully examining his rise and fall, with the intervals betwixt each observation, I was convinced that it can be done with great accuracy, requiring only a steady hand and proper attention. This was a great ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... seen him, having no word for me. The following day, which was beautifully clear, we could make out, some eight miles to the eastward, a large steam vessel flying no flag. Suddenly, after using his sextant, the captain exclaimed: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... single bed, a plain washstand, a battered, painted bureau and a single chair—these made up the list of furniture. Two pictures, both of schooners under full sail, hung on the walls. Beside them hung a ship's barometer, a sextant, and a clock that struck the "bells," instead of the hours as the landsman understands them. In the corner stood the captain's big boots and his oilskins hung above them. His Sunday cane was there also. And on the bureau was a ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 images ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... inducing them to abandon some portion of the loads they intended to carry. I entrusted a small pocket chronometer to Mr. Walker, and another to Corporals Coles and Auger; and to Ruston I gave charge of a pocket-sextant which belonged to the Surveyor-General at Perth. Coles and Auger also undertook to carry a large sextant, turn about; all my own papers, such charts as I thought necessary, and some smaller instruments I bore myself; but Kaiber, in order to relieve me, took ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... make considerable progress in astronomy. Observatories at Bagdad and Damascus were erected as early as the ninth century. Some of the astronomical instruments which they constructed, including the sextant and the gnomon, are ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... to do, and before long I got to have a very friendly feeling for him because of the trouble that he took to make me comfortable and to help me pass the time. The first day out, seeing that I was interested when he took the sun, he turned the sextant over to me and showed me how to take an observation; and then how to work it out and fix the brig's position on the chart—and was a good deal surprised by my quickness in understanding his explanations (for I suppose ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... have," was the answer. "I've a sextant stowed away in a locker on board the Ariel and father has shown me how to ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... I leave here one bag of beads in a skin, 2 bags of Sungo mazi 746 and 756 blue. Gardner's bag of beads, soap 2 bars in 3 boxes (wood). 1st, tea and matunda; 2nd, wooden box, paper and shirts; 3rd, iron box, shoes, quinine, 1 bag of coffee, sextant stand, one long wooden box empty. These are left with Mohamad bin Saleh at Ujiji, Christmas Day, 1871. Two bags of beads are already here and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the Sextant, lies in the region between Regulus and Alphard. It contains no stars ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... a chance to learn on the trip," answered Rainey. "I know the general principles, but I've never tried to use a sextant. I'm going to get the skipper to help me out. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... length upon his face, with his head to the south and both elbows resting upon the snow, was able to hold the sextant steady enough to get his contact of the sun's limb in the very narrow strip of the artificial horizon which was available. A pencil and open note-book under the right hand offered the means of noting the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Beaumont measured the inclination with a sextant and artificial horizon, just as you take the height of the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... anywhere. He was only eighteen, but he could navigate better than the captain. Didn't he fetch the atoll after eighteen days in the longboat? No standard compasses, and you know what a small-boat horizon is, with a big sea, for a sextant. He died, but the dying course he gave me held good, so that I fetched the atoll the very next day after I hove his ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Chilian skipper is not of this class is proved by the appearance of his "cuddy," which is neatly, if not luxuriously, furnished, and prettily decorated. In addition to the instruments that appertain to his calling—telescope, aneroid barometer, sextant, and compass, all placed conspicuously in racks—there is a bookcase of ornamental wood, filled with well-bound volumes; and several squares of looking-glass inlaid between the doors that lead to the four little staterooms—two on each side. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... mentioned that it was comparatively easy to determine the latitude of a ship at sea every day when the sun was visible. The latitude—that is, the distance of any spot from the equator and the pole—might be found by a simple observation with the sextant. The altitude of the sun at noon is found, and by a short calculation the position of the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... observation had been taken. Owen had one evening entered the cabin shortly before the time for taking a lunar observation, in order to ascertain the longitude. Mr Grey had just before gone on deck with his sextant. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... that the Doctor was becoming uneasy. He kept getting out his sextant (an instrument which tells you what part of the ocean you are in) and making calculations. He was forever looking at his maps and measuring distances on them. The far edge of the sea, all around us, he examined with his telescope a ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... the first accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near the river at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in the world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the compass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a quadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were all that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing the lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever they did ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and put his log and the ship's papers in it. He took up his chronometer to bring it, when a wave like that which got the cook and the boy knocked the skipper over and lost the chronometer. All he got away with was his sextant and compass and his watch, which was ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of the voyage Desmond found his position somewhat improved. His pluck had won the rough admiration of the men; Captain Barker was not so constantly chevying him; and Mr. Toley showed a more active interest in him, teaching him the use of the sextant and quadrant, how to take the altitude of the sun, and many other matters ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... said; "I shouldn't be surprised if we get a glimpse of the sun between the clouds, presently. Will you get my sextant and the chronometer up, Jack, and ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... were busy with the problem of accurate chronometers, however, another instrument for taking longitude at sea had been invented. This was the reflecting quadrant, or sextant, as the improved instrument is now called, invented by John Hadley in 1731, and independently by Thomas Godfrey, a poor glazier of Philadelphia, in 1730. Godfrey's invention, which was constructed on the same principle as that of the Hadley instrument, was not generally recognized until two years ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... changes and phases. They predicted weather changes accurately, and kept in their memories periodicity charts so that they are able to form estimates of what will be, by considering what has been. They had a wonderful art of navigation, considering that they had no compass, sextant, or other instrument, and that their vessels were always comparatively small. The handling of canoes, like swimming, is instinctive with them, and no white ever compares ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... astronomers and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration. He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined; and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which, as we have seen, was the centre of practical map-making in the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... determine our longitude; for by the captain's chronometer we were in 25 W., but by his observations we were much farther; and he had been for some time in doubt whether it was his chronometer or his sextant which was out of order. This land-fall settled the matter, and the former instrument was condemned, and, becoming still worse, was never ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... time this was done, from the absence of any shadow cast by the sun, which was high over our mastheads, it was evidently close on to noon; so, the skipper brought his sextant and a big chart he had of the Pacific on deck, spreading the latter over the cuddy skylight, while he yelled out to the dilapidated Mr Flinders, who was repairing damages below, to watch the chronometer and mark the hour ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the officers' quarters to get a sextant or a quadrant. I found that book on navigation in the pilot-house, but I need the instrument, and a nautical almanac. That is as far as ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... always go out upon the deck at noon, if the sun is out, with a very curious and complicated instrument, called a sextant, in their hands; and with this instrument they measure exactly the distance from the sun at noon down to the southern horizon. This is called making an observation. When the observation is made, ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... astronomy. During his stay at Augsburg he constructed a quadrant of fourteen cubits radius, on which were indicated the single minutes of a degree; he made many valuable observations with this instrument, which he used in combination with a large sextant. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... hideous turmoil of human and elemental strife, the three air-ships floated for awhile in a serene and sunlit atmosphere. But this was only for a time. Arnold had taken the position and altitude of the Lucifer very carefully by means of his sextant and compass before he rose into the air, and as soon as his preparations were complete he made another observation of the angle of the sun's elevation, allowing, of course, for his own, and placed his three ships as nearly perpendicular ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... with the utmost good-nature. "Because Uncle Levi Harris down the street is taking care of them for me, Mr. Todd. And he's got my watch and chain, and my sextant and some other things ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... beheld something bright caught up in her tangled gear, whereupon I contrived to scramble aboard and so found this to be Don Federigo's rapier, the which was some small mitigation of my gloom and put me to great hopes that I might find more useful things, as compass or sextant, and so found a small barrico of water firm-wedged beneath a thwart; but save for this the boat was swept bare. So having secured the barrico (and with no small to-do) I hove it ashore and got myself after it, and so came mighty despondent where sat Sir ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 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 ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... in one of Mr. Codrington's boxes, a small sextant for me, which, being packed with the Thomas a Kempis, I think may have been your brother's. Do you really mean this for me too? If so, I shall value it scarcely less than the book. Indeed, I think that, divided as I am from all relations and home influences ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of passion Without a compass or chart, But the glow of your eye shows the sun is high, By the sextant of my heart. I know we are nearing the tropics By the languor that round us lies, And the smile on your mouth says the course is south And ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... length in front of him, he was far enough from romance. He was seventy years old, he weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the chimney-closet in his own room; added to this, he swore strange oaths about his grandmother's nightcap. "He used to blaspheme," his daughter-in-law said, "but I said, 'Not in my ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... but I did not tell him so, for such occurrences are taken as part of the day's work, and the sledge he safeguarded was of much more importance, for it held, as part of its load, the Commander's sextant, the mercury, and the coils of piano-wire that were the essential portion of the scientific part of the expedition. My kamiks (boots of sealskin) were stripped off, and the congealed water was beaten out of my bearskin trousers, and with a dry pair of kamiks, we hurried on to overtake the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... was 8' 45"-; this sum is therefore considered as the standing error of the instrument unless otherwise expressly mentioned. the altitudes of all objects, observed as well with this instrument as with the Octant were by means of a reflecting surface; and those stated to have been taken with the sextant are the degrees, minutes, &c shewn by the graduated limb of the instrument at the time of observation and are of course the double altitudes of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... he had not, nor sextant, To direct him o'er the sea: Ere 't was known that he was extant, At his ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the sextant or a theodolite was used. The theodolite employed was a light 3 Vernier instrument by Carey Porter, intended for sledging work. This instrument was fairly satisfactory, although possibly rigidity had been sacrificed to lightness to rather too great an extent. Another ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... to explore as far as possible. They did so, and, as a natural consequence, lost themselves. But what cared they for that? With youth, and health, and strength, they were as easy in their minds as Lieutenant Greely was with sextant, chart, and compass. As to food, were they not already victualled for, not a three years', but a ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... a staff commander teaching a class how to use the sextant, which is the sailor's most useful instrument for finding his place at sea, from sun and stars; or he may be teaching them how to use a chart or ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... journal, and travelled, I thought, more like a geographer than a fur-trader. He was provided with a sextant, chronometer and barometer, and during a week's sojourn which he made at our place, had an opportunity to make several astronomical observations. He recognised the two Indians who had brought the letter addressed to Mr. J. Stuart, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... was progressing a series of astronomical observations was commenced at this first camp, and continued both day and night without intermission (except when interrupted by unfavorable weather), with the sextant, the repeating circle of reflection, and the transit instrument, until the latitude and longitude of the monument and of this first camp were satisfactorily ascertained, and also the direction of the true meridian from the said monument established. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... shown the planisphere, he proved his knowledge of the planets and many of the constellations, by repeating their Arabic names. The telescope, which presented objects inverted,—the compass, by which he could always turn to the East when praying,—and the sextant, which he called 'the looking-glass of the sun,' excited peculiar interest. He inquired with evident jealousy, into some parts of English history; particularly the conquest of India and the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... interesting part of the survey work was what is known to the surveyor as coast-lining. This meant walking along the edge of the sea ice, fixing one's position by sextant angle every five hundred yards or so, and sketching in a notebook the character and features of the ever changing coast between the various "fixes." One could keep warm doing this and one saw more of the land and ice formation than the others, for it meant ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... off to your cabin and study your navigation, sir. Your ignorance of the simplest matters is fearful. At your age you ought to be as well able to use a sextant as I am." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... night. Far and wide over the stormy waters of the Mediterranean this meteor glowed, inviting and guiding the mariners in; and both its welcome and its guidance were doubly prized in those ancient days, when there was neither compass nor sextant on which they could rely. In the course of the contest with the Egyptians, Caesar took possession of the Pharos, and of the island on which it stood; and as the Pharos was then regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, the fame of ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... a medley 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 Wilson sketching. Since lunch we have marched 6.2 miles S.S.E. by compass (i.e. northwards). ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the bridge, found the evening sun suspended above vast masses of warm clouds and the sea quiet and peaceful. He began to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... England obtained for us. Russen, however, getting in drink, made statements which brought suspicion upon us. I had imposed upon the Consul with a fictitious story of a wreck, but had stated that my name was Wilson, forgetting that the sextant which had been preserved in the boat had Captain Bates's name engraved upon it. These circumstances together caused sufficient doubts in the Consul's mind to cause him to give directions that, on our arrival in London, we were to be brought before the Thames Police Court. There being no evidence ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a little before noon, while lunch was being cooked, the sun broke through the clouds, and for upward of half an hour the ice-pack was one blinding, diamond glitter. Bennett ran for his sextant and got an observation, the first that had been possible for nearly a month. He worked out their ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... a wreath of oak, and with her right is preparing to inscribe the name of the recipient on a monument which is surmounted by the American eagle, and to the right of which are a mast, a yard with its sail bent, an anchor, a sextant, and a branch of laurel. Exergue: ACT OF CONGRESS ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... to be a really splendid boat. We had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an 'Old Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... began to show its broad disk, dimly outlined in the white mists. The captain ran for his sextant; and an observation was caught, which, being worked up, gave our latitude at 45 deg. 35'. We had probably made in the neighborhood of thirty miles during the night: so that the boys on "The Catfish" had given a very ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... I brought up on the starboard side of the pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they "take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel through it. I had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the shoulder ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... measured. I felt very certain that the iceberg was not grounded, because there would be, occasionally, a quivering of the whole mass, which showed that it was floating on the water. It was also growing warmer and warmer every day, which was a favorable symptom. If I had known how to use the sextant or quadrant, I could have settled the matter ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... implements for the scientific portion of the expedition, I took rifles, guns, muskets, pistols, sabres, ammunition in great quantity, large commodious camel-boxes for carrying specimens of natural history, one sextant and artificial horizon, three boiling-point and common atmospheric thermometers, and one primitive kind of camera obscure, which I had made at Aden under the ingenious supervision ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... me! The sextant and chronometer had both been broken beyond repair, and they had been broken just this very night. They had been broken upon the night that Lys had been seen talking with von Schoenvorts. I think that it was this last thought which hurt me the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the men were accustomed to hold on to the back of the sledge, never going in front of the team, and often took off their heavy overcoats and threw them on the load. When taking observations with the sextant, Lieutenant Lockwood generally reclined on the snow, while Sergeant Brainerd called time and made notes, as shown in our illustration. When further progress northward was barred by open water, and the party almost miraculously escaped drifting into the Polar sea, Lieutenant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... was a strange little cutter of five tons, as remarkable for the number of people on board it as mine was for having so few. There was the grey-haired hearty papa, and when we had noticed him taking observations with a sextant, we knew he was "a character." Then there was his active son, and a younger brother, and a sister in bright red, and a sailor boy. They looked even more numerous, because they kept for ever moving out of sight, and then ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... within one month, multiplied into a tale of five hundred, and the cooking-pot, now in a museum at Cape Town, was magnified into a cannon; "I had myself confessed to the loan." Where the five hundred guns came from, it was easy to divine; for, knowing that I used a sextant, my connection with government was a thing of course; and, as I must know all her majesty's counsels, I was questioned on the subject of the indistinct rumors which had reached them of Lord Rosse's telescope. "What right has ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... may be right or I may be wrong. I never was much of a hand at figures. So, if you've no objections, I'd take it very kind of you if you'd lend me a hand at this job while the skipper's on his beam-ends. He's got a real dandy sextant in his cabin that I'll take it upon me to let you have the use of; and the chronometer's in there too. We might as well have them things out of there too, then we shan't have to disturb the young lady every time we ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and under her sits Abraham, its inventor. Music has musical instruments, with Tubal Cain beneath, beating with two hammers upon an anvil, with his ears listening to the sound. Geometry has the quadrant and sextant, with Euclid beneath. Astrology has the sphere of the heavens in her hands, and Atlas under her feet. On the other side sit the seven theological sciences, each one having beneath it a person of an appropriate ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... is drift, not progress, none the less, With the old sextant of the fathers' creed, We shape our courses by new-risen stars, And, still lip-loyal to what once was truth, Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. Change is the mask that all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... forward, and the captain growled after him to himself, "He can have that to fret over now instead of the food;" and as the mate was coming up the cabin stairs at the moment polishing the sextant, he turned away with a look of grim ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, angular distance, angular velocity; trigonometry, goniometry; altimetry^; clinometer, graphometer^, goniometer; theodolite; sextant, quadrant; dichotomy. triangle, trigon^, wedge; rectangle, square, lozenge, diamond; rhomb, rhombus; quadrangle, quadrilateral; parallelogram; quadrature; polygon, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, oxygon^, decagon. pyramid, cone. Platonic bodies; cube, rhomboid; tetrahedron, pentahedron, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the men were often punished twice or thrice in a week. On board the ship of this disciplinarian, Charles and his father were carried in a billy-boat from Sheerness in December 1816: Charles with an outfit suitable to his pretensions, a twenty-guinea sextant and 120 dollars in silver, which were ordered into the care of the gunner. "The old clerks and mates," he writes, "used to laugh and jeer me for joining the ship in a billy-boat, and when they found I was from Kent, vowed I was an old Kentish smuggler. This to my pride, you will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made a start, his sole attendants being a negro servant, Johnson, and a slave boy. Mungo Park was mounted on a strong, spirited little horse, his attendants on donkeys. He had provisions for two days, beads, amber, and tobacco for buying fresh food, an umbrella, a compass, a thermometer and pocket sextant, some pistols and firearms, and "thus attended, thus provided, thus armed, Mungo Park started for the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Duff drew forth from the bundle of bedding he had thrown out, a leather bag. From this he produced a compass and a sextant. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... quarters, Malone's room proved delightful. Three glass ports admitted light. A table in the center of the room spread over with a Mercator's projection showed that Malone dutifully pricked the Vulcan's course on the chart, although it was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant told the American that the stolid Briton worked out his own reckonings. The sight of these things filled the boy with a respect for the uncouth fellow. He understood how doggedly Malone must have labored to acquire mastery over the instruments of navigation. Beyond this ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... front; door C., with window on each side, the window on the R., practicable; doors, R. and L., back; corner cupboard, a brass- strapped sea-chest fixed to the wall and floor, R.; cutlasses, telescopes, sextant, quadrant, a calendar, and several maps upon the wall; a ship clock; three wooden chairs; a dresser against wall, R. C.; on the chimney-piece the model of a brig and several shells. The centre bare of furniture. Through the widows and the door, which is open, green trees and ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... 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
... rate—roads so wide that several wagons might have been driven abreast on them—as wide as the double-track railroads. So the Indian farther west had his highways prepared for him by the instincts of these primitive engineers that knew nothing of trigonometry or the sextant or the places of the stars. [Footnote: Hulbert, "Historic Highways," vol. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... astonished when papa came on deck with the sextant in his hand, and "shot" the sun, as it is called; that is to say, he ascertained our exact latitude by observing through the instrument the height of the sun at noon. Placing it to his eye, he watched it until it ceased ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... antiquity of this father of our sextant, a fragment of which was found in the Palace of Sennacherib. More concerning the "Arstable" (as Chaucer calls it) is given in my "Camoens: his Life and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... inexperienced officer will find difficulty in estimating distances by the eye alone, as it requires long practice and studied observation. The sextant, however, offers a surer method of approximately fixing a position by taking the angles between any three points, which are generally found to be accurately laid down on the Coast Survey charts; then plotting the angles with a horn protractor, or working them out by the three-point problem, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... Grandpa Ready for Sunday-school," from the "Cape Cod Folks;" but why not save space for what is not in everybody's mouth and memory? This is equally true of Mrs. Cleaveland's "No Sects in Heaven," which, like Arabella Wilson's "Sextant," goes the rounds of all the papers every other ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... understood sail, which those Navy chaps rarely do. Why, you and I have sailed with men before the mast who had their master's certificates in their pockets,—English Board of Trade certificates, too,—who could work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give them a look at the chronometer, as well as many a man who commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor seamanship, either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... fitted out for a pioneering voyage as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Salem knew her as "the great ship" and yet her hull was not quite one hundred feet long. Safely Captain Jonathan Ingersoll took her out over the long road, his navigating equipment consisting of a few erroneous maps and charts, a sextant, and Guthrie's Geographical Grammar. In Table Bay he sold his cargo of provisions and then visited the coast of Guinea to dispose of his rum for ivory and gold dust but brought not a single slave back, Mr. Derby ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... whenever he happens to speak of this sailing ship he grows warmer. One notices the passion for sailing which this seaman has, for he was trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... my chair slightly south, and pretended to regard the apple-blossom, and when Nevin went into the house and brought out something which dimly resembled a ship's sextant I had the extreme presence of mind not to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... only knows; and so this poor black devil always returns to the master's cabin, and makes it, as it were, his head-quarters. At last the master, who was as even-tempered an officer as ever I sailed with, finds one day that his sextant case is all of a smudge: so being touched in a sore place, he gets into a great rage, and orders all the boys of the ship to catch the cat; and after much ado, the poor cat was catched, and brought aft into the gun-room. 'Now, then, P—-,' said the master to the first-lieutenant, 'will you help ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... candles, and a heterogeneous assortment of sundries flew from the racks and shelves with a clattering crash, and constituted a very pretty "general average" on the deck—"what d'ye think of that, my noble knight of the sextant?" ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... to have talked without intermission for two hours; before them on the table lay barometer, chronometer, sextant, journal, and half the ship's library. This consisted of Kingo's hymn-book and an old Dutch 'Kaart-Boikje'; [Footnote: Chart-book.] for the skipper could do just as little with the new hymns as the steersman ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... no chronometers in use, and but few of our West India captains were in possession of a sextant, or indeed able to work a lunar observation. The latitude was accurately determined every day by measuring the altitude of the sun as it passed the meridian. To ascertain the longitude was a more difficult matter. They were obliged ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... value were saved in the same manner, including the captain's chronometer and sextant, the sad neglect of which had caused the terrible disaster. Towards night a change in the wind "knocked down" the sea, and the waves no longer dashed against the shattered vessel. The galley had been washed away; but the boat on deck, though thrown from ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... days our course has not been plotted. I sit down and do this now, for the purpose of finding where we are by dead reckoning. It is a clear night, and I take out the sextant to make observations for latitude, and find that the astronomic determination agrees very nearly with that of the plot—quite as closely as might be expected, from a meridian observation on a planet. In a direct line, we must be about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgen. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... sextant and other apparatus, some of which Tom had invented himself, the exact position of the submarine was calculated. As the last figure was set down and compared with their previous location, one of the men who had been doing ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... been the barometer, for I know he had them both," resumed the aunt. "Barometer, or thermometer, it do n't make any great difference; or quadrant, or sextant. They are all instruments, and sometimes he used one, and sometimes another. Sailors take on board the sun, too, and have an instrument for that, as well as one to weigh the weather with. Sometimes they take on board the stars, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... he cried, his eyes sparkling from the effects of the brandy. "Plenty on my mind—plenty! But I can work out the latitude and the longitude, and I can handle my sextant and manage my logarithms. You couldn't prove me mad in a court of law, could you, now?" It was curious to hear the man lying back and coolly arguing out the question of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our old camp ground at Eight-Mile Spring and there spent the night. Prof. had forgotten his sextant and rode back to our main camp for it. We continued in the morning without him to a place farther east called Navajo Well, a deep spring in a sort of natural hole, somewhat aided by native hands, in the midst of some sloping, barren rocks, the last spot where one would look for water. A large flat ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Sextant and three points. The most rapid accurate method is to adopt three points visible all over the ground (as trees or chimneys) or set up three markers. Find shape and size of this triangle. Then at any point take two angles ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... THE AMATEUR, by 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 ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... Sumner, W. H. Dunn, and O. G. Howland, party of the second part, witnesseth, that the said party of the second part agree to do the following work, respectively, for the party of the first part, namely: J. C. Sumner agrees to do all necessary work required with the sextant; W. H. Dunn to make barometrical observations night and morning of each day, when required, also to make observations when needed for determining altitude of walls of the Canon, also to make not ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of the earth! May He accept my children for his service, and sanctify them for it! My blessing on my wife. May God comfort her! If my watch comes back after I am cut off, it belongs to Agnes. If my sextant, it is Robert's. The Paris medal to Thomas. Double-barreled gun to Zouga. Be a Father to the fatherless, and a Husband to the widow, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... self-examination for the 'great' things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at the gate with a 'How camest thou in hither?' 'Look after the pence, and the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to bring Wolf Larsen's chronometer and sextant," I said, still gloomily. "Sailing one direction, drifting another direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can never calculate. Before ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... from my feet, without having time to pick them up again, when lions, men, or hyenas startled me from my botanizing. My very excellent watch was, for the short duration of my passage, a capital chronometer. Besides this I needed a sextant, some scientific ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... doing. While his head ached slightly from the fiery usquebaugh of the Bowhead saloon, he craved a return to a solid diet, so for several minutes he lay supine, conjuring in his agile brain ways and means of supplying this need in the absence of ready cash. "I'll have to hock my sextant," was the conclusion at which he presently arrived. Then he commenced to heave and surge until presently he found himself clear of the blankets and seated in his underclothes on the side of the bed. Here, he indulged in a ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... son's third report; the first, as far as I can ascertain, was never published. This last was accompanied by many observations taken with the sextant and other instruments, requiring long experience to understand and handle correctly. Brahe, a German, had been instructed by my son in their use, and had made some progress. Notwithstanding his fatal error in leaving the depot contrary to orders, he had, in some respects, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the midshipmen to search for a sextant and nautical almanack, but, to their surprise, neither were to be found. "The chronometer was," the doctor said, "he knew, in the captain's cabin;" and they at last began to suspect that the boatswain had managed to ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... threw on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... old servant, the only one in the house, opened it, and led him into a chamber in which his old master was sitting upon a cushion, before a large table covered with a black cloth. Rolls of parchment with unknown characters, compasses, a sextant, a triangle, and other instruments, lay scattered round in disorder. He received Jussuf with friendly nods, without rising from his cushion, motioning him to sit down opposite, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... of his new life, together with the use of a pocket sextant, prompted him to make various experiments for himself. The only sources from which he could obtain helpful information, however, were some cheap elementary books on mechanics and optics which he procured from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; these he ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 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 working ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... specialty, he has done much good work in various other directions. Among his mechanical inventions are a sonotype, a tuning instrument by means of which any one can tune a piano accurately, an improved level, theodolite and sextant, a scale for measuring the differences in the solidity ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Jack's forty thousand, and the never-to-be-forgotten interview in San Francisco with Senora Estrada, the agent of the insurgents; of the incident of her calling-card—how she tore it in two and gave one-half to Isham; of their outfitting, and the broken sextant that was to cause their ultimate discomfiture and disaster, and of the voyage to the rendezvous on ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... botanical investigations, without having time to pick them up, when threatened by the approach of lions, men, or hyenas. My excellent watch, owing to the short duration of my movements, was also on these occasions an admirable chronometer. I wanted, besides, a sextant, a few philosophical instruments, and some books. To purchase these things, I made several unwilling journeys to London and Paris, choosing a time when I could be hid by the favouring clouds. As all my ill-gotten gold was exhausted, I carried over from Africa some ivory, which is ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... five years more, Dick Sand would know thoroughly that beautiful and difficult sailor's craft. He would know how to use the sextant—that instrument which Captain Hull's hand had held every day, and which gave him the height of the stars. He would read on the chronometer the hour of the meridian of Greenwich, and from it would be able to deduce the longitude by the hour angle. The sun would be ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... November, 1572, Tycho noticed an unfamiliar bright star in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and continued to observe it with a sextant. It was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho wrote ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... for ascertaining the heights of the Lunar mountains by the barometric pressure under which water boils, a sextant to measure the altitude of the Sun, a theodolite for taking horizontal or vertical angles, telescopes, of indispensable necessity when the travellers should approach the Moon,—all these instruments, carefully examined, were found to ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... French coast, and lost my chronometer, and a tip-top sextant. But what of that? I saved It. I have just landed It in the Bank. Good-bye; I must sheer off: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I saw him with his sextant, as you told me that queer triangular thing was," said I; "but I didn't know what he was doing. I thought our starting-place was the Thames? We must have gone miles and miles since we ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all knowledge of navigation, was busy in the turret with a sextant. He made rapid calculations based on its indications and hurried to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... SEXTANT, an instrument used in navigation (sometimes also in land-surveying) for measuring the altitudes of celestial bodies and their angular distances; consists of a graduated brass sector, the sixth part of a circle, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Apprentice: bad as the cuts are executed, there was not at that time an artist in Boston who could have done them much better. Some time before, and soon after there were better engravers in Boston." These cuts, especially the frontispiece representing a boy with a spy-glass and globe, and with a sextant at his feet, are far from poor work for a lad of thirteen. "The battered dictionary," says Dr. Nichols, "and the ink-stained Bible which he found in Fowle's office started him in his career, and the printing-press, together with an invincible determination to excel in his calling, carried him ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... seated upon one of the arm-chests near the stern of the ship, her husband and children were all with her enjoying the fine weather, when Captain Osborn, who had been taking an observation of the sun with his sextant, came up ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... we ever got anywhere, for we had not so much as a chronometer watch, and so in spite of a decrepit sextant even our latitude was often an uncertain quantity. However, we made the port of Douglas, whence we visited quite a part of the historic island. As our parson was called home from there, we wired for and secured another chum to share our labours. Our generally unconventional ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... and animals amongst which he would afterwards be thrown. If he has no private means of learning the names of such persons, I should recommend him to write to some public Professor, stating all particulars, and begging the favour of his advice. The use of the sextant may be learnt at various establishments in the City and East End of London, where the junior officers of merchant vessels receive instruction at small cost. A traveller could learn their addresses from the maker of his sextant. He might also ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... observations" at noon, if the sun is out, by means of a sextant, with which they measure the distance from the sun to the southern horizon. In this way the captain can tell the exact latitude of the ship; but Miss Percival made believe there was a storm coming up; so it was not ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May |
