ilous voyage.

And, oh, how faithfully would Frank carry out his dead benefactor's
wishes, if he but lived to set foot on the soil of Pennsylvania again!

Buoyed up by this new hope and determined henceforth to make the best of
all and everything that might befall him, Frank went to the galley, made
himself a cup of strong coffee, and, with some hard biscuit, cheese and
dried beef that he found there, made a hearty supper.

Everything remained in the galley just as poor Nat had left it, and
during the whole time he was on the schooner it constituted the limit of
Frank's foraging-ground, for he had not the courage to enter the cabin
yet, or search for other stores than the cook's room afforded.

On the evening of the fifth day a brisk breeze sprang up, which set the
whitecaps to tumbling far and near and sent clouds of spray flying from
the schooner's bows.

The sun set in the luminous west, leaving behind a long track of orange
and purple light; the growing moon flung its yellow rays across the
troubled waters, melting into the million phosphorescent gleams that
sparkled and quivered along the surface like living jets of fire. Frank
had never before seen so lovely a sunset, or one so utterly lonely and
sad. He stretched himself on the deck, with his two hands clasped under
his head, in lieu of a pillow, and watched the masts make eccentric
circles through the stars, and the few fleecy clouds, that for a time
had followed in the wake of the moon, vanish, as it seemed to him, into
the sea.

"The vessel must be making six knots an hour, and doing it, too,
easily."

Frank fell asleep with some such vague calculation drifting
disconnectedly through his mind. He was awakened about daylight by the
loud screaming of a number of gulls that were flying near the vessel in
anxious search of a morsel of food.

He jumped up in great excitement, not on account of the noise made by
the gulls, but another sound he heard--a deep, continuous roar, not
unlike the moan of the wind through a pine forest.

He looked around him, first confusedly and then with surprised wonder.
His eyes brightened, and a cry of joy broke from his lips, for there,
not a mile away, was land. A long, white line of surf marked the
boundary of the beach, and beyond it he saw the feathery tops of palm
and cocoanut trees, nodding in the fresh morning breeze.

Land at last!

Again Frank's jubilant shout echoed oddly clear and solitary above the
incessant