"Sextant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quadrant indicate? And how does the sextant stand?' 'Oh, the sextant's down to the freezing point And ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... on 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 ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... a little glass in the business attached to the sextant. But you thought I meant observations ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... going to keep a journal of my own each day. We haven't got any sextant to take observations, but I've got all the maps, and I've got a compass—maybe we'll get out a Voyage of Discoveries ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... 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 ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... 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 pounds will look after ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... the whole party was such that a clear passage was opened in less than half an hour. The sailors swam about like frogs, and swimming, divided with a cross-cut saw trees under water. I found I could survey the river as we proceeded by measuring, with a pocket sextant, the angle subtended by the two ends of a twelve feet rod held in the second boat, at the opposite end of each reach, the bearing being observed at the same time. By referring to one of Brewster's tables, the angle formed by the rod of twelve feet, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... if so the observation had to 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 Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 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, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... 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
... a man found means of carrying off a sextant from Mr Bayley's observatory. Omai fixed on the culprit, who was a Bolabola man, a hardened scoundrel. He confessed that he had taken the instrument, and would show where it was. This did not save him, however, from ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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, and ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... 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 ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... meteorological and astronomical instruments—the thermometers of Baudin, Salleron, Fastre, an aneroid, a Fortin barometer, chronometers, a sextant, an astronomical spyglass, a compass glass.... In short, what Duveyrier calls the material that is simplest and easiest ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... have been left in the tent: 3 half bags of reindeer containing a miscellaneous assortment of mits and sleeping socks, very various in description, a sextant, a Norwegian artificial horizon and a hypsometer without boiling-point thermometers, a sextant and hypsometer ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Manjalli Tabba Cotta, 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 relief to me; I had been plagued watching the passage of the fixed stars, ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... Nautilus; the barometer, which indicates the weight of the air and foretells the changes of the weather; the hygrometer, which marks the dryness of the atmosphere; the storm-glass, the contents of which, by decomposing, announce the approach of tempests; the compass, which guides my course; the sextant, which shows the latitude by the altitude of the sun; chronometers, by which I calculate the longitude; and glasses for day and night, which I use to examine the points of the horizon, when the Nautilus rises to the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... kept a regular 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, and told us that they were ...
— 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
... 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 to draw a ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... first part, and J. C. 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 more than sixty-two hourly series of not more than ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh |
