That hurried meal over, I went up to the bridge to relieve the officer in charge of submarine lookouts for the morning watch. It was a glorious day, with a foretaste of summer in the air. The sea was calm, and visibility rather below normal. The Fleet was proceeding leisurely in usual formation. In accordance with custom, at 9.15 "General Quarters" was sounded off by the bugler, and the succeeding two and a half hours at control stations passed without incident. This over, the Commander (N.), i.e. navigator, sent down a chit to the Senior Midshipman, which chit read as follows: "I consider this a good opportunity for all Midshipmen to take sights." This, of course, raised a moan, but collecting our sextants we paired off and went up to the signal deck. On this occasion I was paired with Campbell.
"After you with the deck watch," I said to the Snotty who was using it. He handed it over to me a minute later, and my partner and I compared it with my watch, and then took up a good position for taking a sight. I levelled my sextant at the sun. "Got it?" queried Campbell. "No, blast the beastly thing. Why on earth do they provide us with upside down telescopes. I can't get it—half a mo' though, there it is."
I moved the arm of the instrument along the arc to bring the sun down to the horizon—in doing so, lost old Sol again about three times, but eventually got it down, and then the horizon was promptly obliterated by smoke from our funnels. No sooner had that cleared off than the ship altered course to starboard, so the elusive orb once more disappeared, this time obscured by the funnel, and we had to change to the other side of the deck and start all over again. At last I managed to get my reading, and after my partner had got his, we went off to the gunroom to have lunch. That meal disposed of, we set to and worked out our sights. Mine proved to be miles out, so after reworking it three times, I came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with my sextant. I took it down from the shelf, and going to the scuttle, proceeded to check all the usual errors. The index adjustment was all right, but there were about three degrees of side error in the instrument. I tried to take it out, but only succeeded in putting in about double the amount of index error. After spending a considerable amount of time in fiddling about, I shouted for help from any one who felt capable of giving it. Campbell promptly volunteered, and we went up on deck, where we began to try and adjust the sextant. We had only been up there a few minutes when I saw a two-flag signal flutter to the yard-arm of the Flagship.