The big ship was ploughing her way through the long, smooth rollers at
her average twenty-one knots towards the rising sun, when the officer in
charge of the navigating bridge happened to turn his glasses straight
ahead. He took them down from his eyes, rubbed the two object-glasses
with the cuff of his coat, and looked again. The sun was shining through
a haze which so far dimmed the solar disc that it was possible to look
straight at it without inconvenience to the eyes.
The officer took another long squint, put his glasses down, rubbed his
eyes and took another, and murmured, "Well I'm damned!"
Just then the Fourth Officer came up on to the bridge to relieve his
senior while he went down for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. The Second
took him away to the other end of the bridge, out of hearing of the
helmsman and the quartermaster standing by, and said almost in a
whisper:
"Say, Norton, there's something ahead there that I can't make out. Just
as the sun got clear above the horizon I saw a black spot go straight
across it, right through the upper and lower limbs. I looked again, and
it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look," he went on, speaking
louder in his growing excitement, "there it is again! I can see it
without the glasses now. See?"
The Fourth did not reply at once. He had the glasses close to his eyes,
and was moving them slowly about as though he were following some
shifting object in the sky.
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