242  Lommy Twister’s Discovery

doubt there is something up there which it
wishes to find. When that little needle is
carried southwards in a ship it keeps point-
ing, pointing over the stern, as if it entirely
disapproved of the way it was being made
to go.

“Tt cannot be persuaded to look the other
way. If they turn it the other way with
their fingers it whirls round again im-
mediately, and keeps shaking its head
angrily for some time, until it forgets the
insult. It is so eager that it trembles con-
tinually—partly, perhaps, because it is afraid
of the ship going down, for it knows it
would sink in the water; but principally, no
doubt, because it is so anxious to get to its
beloved North Pole. But the curious thing
is that, when the ship gets near the Equator
—which is a fancy line round the earth at
exactly the same distance from the North
Pole and the South Pole—it begins to get
undecided and troubled in its mind, leaves
off staring steadily at the north, and keeps
casting little hurried glances round the corner
in the other direction.