"I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years,"
he says ruefully.
A postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. The
tapes then go to the A. B. C., which collates and makes composite
photographs of them for the instruction of captains. Tim studies
his irrevocable past, shaking his head.
"Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at fifty-five degrees!
We must have been standing on our heads then, George."
"You don't say so," George answers. "I fancied I noticed it at
the time."
George may not have Captain Purnall's catlike swiftness, but he
is all an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that play on
the shunt-stops. The delicious flight-curves come away on the
tape with never a waver. The Mark Boat's vertical spindle of
light lies down to eastward, setting in the face of the following
stars. Westward, where no planet should rise, the triple
verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still to the Southern route)
make a low-lifting haze. We seem the only thing at rest under all
the heavens; floating at ease till the earth's revolution shall
turn up our landing-towers.
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