noon
As they made their southing , wind and weather seemed to fall astern , the sun poured with a more golden candour . He stood at the wheel in a tranquil reverie , blithely steering toward some bright belly of cloud that had caught his fancy . Mr. Pointer shook his head when he glanced surreptitiously at the steering recorder , a device that noted graphically every movement of the rudder with a view to promoting economical helmsmanship . Indeed Gissing 's course , as logged on the chart , surprised even himself , so that he forbade the officers taking their noon observations . When Mr. Pointer said something about isobars , the staff-captain replied serenely that he did not expect to find any polar bears in these latitudes . He had hoped privately for an occasional pirate , and scanned the sea-rim sharply for suspicious topsails . But the ocean , as he remarked , is not crowded .