permanency of which might be relied upon.
After supper I laid myself down at the foot of the mast, and fell asleep in the midst of fantastic reveries.
Hans, keeping fast by the helm, let the raft run on, which, after all, needed no steering, the wind blowing directly aft.
Since our departure from Port Gräuben, Professor Liedenbrock had entrusted the log to my care; I was to register every observation, make entries of interesting phenomena, the direction of the wind, the rate of sailing, the way we made—in a word, every particular of our singular voyage.
I shall therefore reproduce here these daily notes, written, so to speak, as the course of events directed, in order to furnish an exact narrative of our passage.
Friday, August 14 .—Wind steady, N. W. The raft makes rapid way in a direct line. Coast thirty leagues to leeward. Nothing in sight before us. Intensity of light the same. Weather fine; that is to say, that the clouds are flying high, are light, and bathed in a white atmosphere resembling silver in a state of fusion. Therm. 89° Fahr. At noon Hans prepared a hook at the end of a line. He baited it with a small piece of meat and flung it into the sea. For two hours nothing was caught. Are these waters, then, bare of inhabitants? No, there’s a pull at the line. Hans draws it in and brings out a struggling fish. “A sturgeon,” I cried; “a small sturgeon.” The Professor eyes the creature attentively, and his opinion differs from mine.