"
Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly-reckoned;
I make it _first_: as you came this way,
You should have lost--d'ye see--a day;
Lost a day, as plainly see,
On the hundred and eightieth degree."
"Lost a day?" "Yes: if not rude,
When did you make east longitude?"
"On the ninth of May,--our patron's day."
"On the ninth?--_you had no ninth of May!_
Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"--
Too late; for the galleon bore away.
Lost was the day they should have kept,
Lost unheeded and lost unwept;
Lost in a way that made search vain,
Lost in the trackless and boundless main;
Lost like the day of Job's awful curse,
In his third chapter, third and fourth verse;
Wrecked was their patron's only day,--
What would the holy fathers say?
Said the Fray Antonio Estavan,
The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,--
"Nothing is lost that you can regain:
And the way to look for a thing is plain
To go where you lost it, back again.
Back with your galleon till you see
The hundred and eightieth degree.
Wait till the rolling year goes round,
And there will the missing day be found;
For you'll find--if computation's true--
That sailing _east_ will give to you
Not only one ninth of May, but two,--
One for the good saint's present cheer,
And one for the day we lost last year.
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