A table can
then be made showing what the pointing, according to the compass,
should be in order that the ship may sail in any given direction.
This, however, does not wholly avoid the danger. The tables thus
made are good when the ship is on a level keel. If, from any cause
whatever, she heels over to one side, the action will be
different. Thus there is a "heeling error" which must be allowed
for. It is supposed to have been from this source of error not
having been sufficiently determined or appreciated that the
lamentable wreck of the United States ship Huron off the coast of
Hatteras occurred some twenty years ago.
X
THE FAIRYLAND OF GEOMETRY
If the reader were asked in what branch of science the imagination
is confined within the strictest limits, he would, I fancy, reply
that it must be that of mathematics. The pursuer of this science
deals only with problems requiring the most exact statements and
the most rigorous reasoning. In all other fields of thought more
or less room for play may be allowed to the imagination, but here
it is fettered by iron rules, expressed in the most rigid logical
form, from which no deviation can be allowed. We are told by
philosophers that absolute certainty is unattainable in all
ordinary human affairs, the only field in which it is reached
being that of geometric demonstration.
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