User:JohnB/The Book and the stone 6

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Yes, Child, sea monsters do exist![edit]

Asantus's navigation skill was put to a severe test one day at the taking of the speed and latitude on the observation platform near the steering wheel. First, a cord attached to a board was tossed into the sea, and the long knotted cord played out from its spool as the board was held relatively stationary in the water.

According to the MIT School of Engineering, "Based on the length of the nautical mile, knots were tied along the log line at intervals of 14.4 meters. One end was secured to the ship’s stern and the other was attached to the wooden board, which was dropped into the water. 'As one sailor watched the sand empty through the 30-second glass, his shipmate held the line as it played out behind the ship and counted the knots as they passed between his fingers,' says Caballero. Dividing that 14.4 meters by 30 seconds told them that one knot equaled 1.85166 kilometers per hour or one nautical mile. By performing the calculation using the actual number of knots that unspooled, the sailors were able to measure the ship’s speed." (From engineering{dot}mit{dot}edu{slash}engage{slash}ask-an-engineer{slash}why-is-speed-at-sea-measured-in-knots.)

The calculation could only be done using a new system of counting brought to Nirn by two men, a Redguard and a Japanese, who come from outer space (c.f. 14. The Invaders in The Kaleidoscope), which was surprisingly accurate for such a primitive method of speed measurement.

The sun was slowly approaching the meridian that extended from the zenith to the south. As the navigator and Asantus awaited high noon, the lookout on the main mast suddenly called out.

"Ahoy! Something approaching fast from dead ahead!"

"What is it?!" the captain shouted back.

"Can't tell! But from the distance and size, it seems very big!"

The captain grabbed the spyglass.

"I hope it's not what I think it is!" he muttered as he climbed some rigging to get a better look through the spyglass. "Holy lady in heaven, it is!.....A KRAKEN!" he yelled to the navigating crew.

User-JohnB-800px-Hokusai Dragon.png

He clambered down from the rigging.

"Tack to starboard!" the captain shouted to the steersman. "Now!"

"Ay-ay, sir!"

Everything that wasn't nailed down on the ship was thrown about, the bowl with the needle included.

As the ship veered away, they could see the monster pass by the port side minding its own business. It is said that the kraken preys on ships, but something that enormous can't take much sustenance from a puny three-masted galleon. It prefers whales and giant squids. The serpent was as big around as an ancient oak tree and undulated over the surface of the ocean. It had a Daedroth-like head with antlers sticking out of it. The ship bobbed up and down as the head slammed into the water again, and its body arched some fifty feet above them, the scaly body sliding into the water like a giant water wheel. There was no time to alert the other ships in the fleet, and one after the other they were dashed to matchsticks.

When the sea was calm again, the crew lowered longboats to bring survivors on board. The loss was tremendous and disheartening, what with a much larger crew now on board but the same stores to feed them. Only a few crates bobbing on the water were retrieved, everything else having gone down with the ships. They were also like blind men on the great platter of the sea. Asantus got down on his hands and knees sweeping the lodestone over the deck where the bowl had smashed and the needle had slipped between the boards.

"Found it!" he shouted raising the needle above his head.

The crew burst out with "Hip-hip-hurrah!"

The members of navigation team met to figure out what to do. They came up with a design for a compass table with axles on the x-axis and the y-axis that kept the table surface level at all times. The ship carpenter built the table and also used a wood lathe to fashion a hardwood bowl to contain the floating needle. Crew members came forward to contribute spare needles for Asantus to magnetize and keep in store should their one and only needle be lost again.

Having missed the the latitude reading on that fateful day, and without a working compass table while it was being constructed, the captain tried to steer the ship by dead reckoning for several days. This involved keeping the sunrise in front and the sunset behind, which sounds straightforward enough, but when the sun was high in the sky, there was no telling in which direction they were headed. Ocean currents could push a ship imperceptibly sideways, and leagues could be lost just being pushed in the wrong direction. The air was starting to get chilly, and then chunks of ice began drifting by. The chunks grew into blue and white mountains of ice.