Free Splintered Icon by Bill Napier

Richard, Holby has vanished. If he is not onboard ship then he is at the bottom of the ocean. He didn't jump. He was not pushed or he would have cried out. Ogilvie's story is consistent with the only reasonable possibility. Holby was stabbed or knocked out and thrown overboard.'
    'First Holby and then the carpenter.'
    The carpenter! So the man under the barrels was not Holby after all, but a second victim.
    'It seems we have a murderer in our midst, Richard.'
    'Aye. For what motive, Harriot?' The two men were looking grimly at each other. At that moment I sensed -no, I knew - that this voyage had some secret purpose. And whatever that secret purpose might be, someone onboard was trying to frustrate it.
    Sir Richard suddenly became aware of my presence again. 'Leave us,' he ordered brusquely.
    I had reached the door when Mr Harriot said, 'Ogilvie. I need an assistant. I think you would be more usefully employed in my service than on the masts. Are you agreeable, Richard?'
    Sir Richard waved his hand casually in agreement. I wondered if St Peter, waving his hand to direct an undeserving soul towards heaven, could have induced greater happiness.
     
    'Do you recognise the pole star?'
    'I do, sir. The Bears guide us to it. There they are, at the end of the Little Bear. And we have the pointers of the Great Bear. The Bears circle the sky but never dip below the horizon. All the other stars in the sky seem to rotate about the pole star, but this is an illusion. It is really the earth which rotates. The stars are fixed in the sky, embedded in a crystal sphere.'
    'And if you were standing at the North Pole, where would Polaris be?'
    'Directly overhead. All the stars move in horizontal circles about it.'
    We were mid-ship, far enough away from the great lantern on the afterdeck for our night eyes to be unaffected by it. Mr Harriot had a strange bowl, made of clay and filled with some burning herb. He was sucking the smoke along a hollow tube and into his mouth. 'Now put on magic boots. Take giant strides over the surface of the earth towards the equator. What do you see in the sky as you move south?'
    I took a moment, unsure what answer Mr Harriot expected of me. 'Sir, the pole star would no longer be overhead. As I strode to the equator in my magic boots, the pole star would sink lower and lower in the sky.'
    'And at the equator?'
    'The pole star would then be lying on the horizon. All the stars would move in big vertical circles around the axle joining north and south. And if I moved south of the equator, Polaris would disappear from sight. Except that I would then see the other pole star, the one at the South Pole.'
    'Except that there is no such star. The Italian traders and missionaries, travelling by overland or on coastal routes around the tip of Africa, have described the southern skies. Marco Polo travelled even further south than the missionaries. He saw many wonders in the southern sky. He saw a star as big as a sack, and four bright stars in the form of a cross. He even saw the south pole of the sky a spear's length above the horizon. But he described no southern pole star. Even so, we in the North have an infallible way to find our latitude on the surface of the earth.'
    He paused. I said, 'Find the altitude of the pole star above the horizon. If it is overhead, you must be at the North Pole. If it lies on the horizon, your ship must lie on the equator. And if it is sixty degrees from the zenith, we are sixty degrees from the north pole of the earth and so thirty degrees from the equator. That is, our latitude is thirty degrees.'
    'And I have an instrument for the very purpose of measuring altitude. It is called a cross staff, and I will train you in its use shortly. So, Ogilvie, you see how to determine how far north or south we are. But now the question arises, what about east or west? Here we are, sailing on an empty ocean. There is nothing around you but waves and sea monsters. Are we a hundred leagues from England? A