lighting the pipe at the
binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
He darted a look into the
binnacle and took a hurried compass bearing of the sounds Jerry was making.
All the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the
binnacle lantern behind me.
But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady
binnacle lamp illuminating it.
As soon as I had changed my clothes I went up on to the platform, and, a prey to conflicting emotions, I sat down near the
binnacle. Captain Nemo joined me.
He was said to be paying his addresses to Lady Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third daughter, and whose sister, Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts, "The Sailor's True
Binnacle," and "The Applewoman of Finchley Common."
But going forward I met Ransome bringing up the spare
binnacle lamp.
The steering-gear leaked steam, and in the confined space the glass of the
binnacle made a shiny oval of light in a thin white fog.
'mcCoy ducked his head into the
binnacle and watched the course set.
The pilot was still on board, who gave him first a silent glance, and then passed an insignificant remark before resuming his lounging to and fro between the steering wheel and the
binnacle. Powell took his station modestly at the break of the poop.
And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that I found those I sought standing almost unconcernedly beside the
binnacle.
"We ought to be moving along a line that'll cross somewhere northard of New Zealand," Daughtry guessed to himself, after a hundred stolen glances into the
binnacle. But that was all the information concerning the ship's navigation he could steal; for Captain Doane took the observations and worked them out, to the exclusion of the mate, and Captain Doane always methodically locked up his chart and log.
binnacle - a nonmagnetic housing for a ship's compass (usually in front of the helm)