noon
By breakfast-time we were making so much better weather of it that we were able to open the hatches , and the windsails were rigged up to let down some fresh air below , which enabled us to have a better meal than we expected ; so our hot cocoa and bread possessed an additional relish , not only from this circumstance , but also from the fact of our not having enjoyed anything hot since the previous day at dinner , the galley fires having been swamped out just before tea-time , thus forcing us to turn in supperless . Later on , as the gale slackened , we set our topsails close-reefed , and more ` fore-and-aft ' sail ; and , when the sun had got above our foreyard , the commodore ordered the topgallant-masts to be sent up , these having been housed when it came on to blow heavily . Our topgallants were consequently set above our close-reefed topsails , which some of the young seamen on board appeared to think a most extraordinary proceeding ; but one of the quarter-masters , who was an old hand , said he had often seen it done when sailing `` under old Fitzroy on the Pacific station , '' when their ship would be bowling along under this sail before a stiff nor ' - easter , in the run down from Vancouver to Callao , past the inhospitable Californian coast . At noon that day , the navigating officer , who took the sun on the poop , surrounded by a lot of the young midshipmen we had on board for instruction during the training cruise , like us boys on the lower deck each in our respective billet , gave out that we were in latitude 44 degrees 10 minutes north , and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west , thus showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape Finisterre and now safely out of the Bay of Biscay ! The navigator also told our commanding officer , in the usual stereotyped nautical formula , that it was twelve o'clock . `` All right , '' replied the commodore . `` Make it so ! ''