Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/17

 we went forward like an arrow from a bow, without the smallest deviation towards the rocks on one side, or the dreary obscurity on the other.

In this manner we were carried on, without the smallest traceable variation, till the 18th of June, a period of three months and two days, in which time, if my above-stated calculation of our progress be any thing like correct, and I am sure I do not over-rate it, we must have gone straight onward above seventy thousand miles, a space nearly three times the circumference of the earth. On the evening of that day which was to become memorable by the triumphant termination of the immortal battle of Waterloo, and which on my account also, though without any merit of mine, will be a new æra in the history of the world, we found ourselves suddenly emerging into a wide sea as smooth as glass—the heavens above twinkling with stars, some of which I had never seen before, and some of our own constellations, which were visible, shone out with increased lustre, though still not subtending any angle to Rh