At any point a sounding line would hang in the line of the radius of curvature of the water surface.
I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.
As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in '46, with compass and chain and sounding line.