He had crossed this part of the Pacific several times during his three fishing voyages to the Southern Seas.

Now, in the latitude and longitude where his reckoning put him, it was seldom that some English or American ship did not appear, ascending from Cape Horn toward the equator, or coming toward the extreme point of South America.
But what Dick Sand was ignorant of, what he could not even discover, was that the "Pilgrim" was already in higher latitude--that is to say, more to the south than he supposed.

That was so for two reasons: The first was, that the currents of these parts, whose swiftness the novice could only imperfectly estimate, had contributed--while he could not possibly keep account of them--to throw the ship out of her route.
The second was, that the compass, made inaccurate by Negoro's guilty hand, henceforth only gave incorrect bearings--bearings that, since the loss of the second compass, Dick Sand could not control.

So that, believing, and having reason to believe, that he was sailing eastward, in reality, he was sailing southeast.

The compass, it was always before his eyes.