He had passed through all there was, he thought, of sorrow, dismay, disappointment and horror; and whatever there might be of suffering and danger in store for him, he felt that, at most, they could give him no greater pain than he had already endured. The reflection somehow was as comforting as it was sudden and startling to his weary energies and overtaxed strength. He would not give up again, and, from that moment, resolved to save both the vessel and himself, if he could. Captain Thorne, when predicting his own speedy death, had spoken as if he thought Frank would live to reach land; and in this belief he had died, after giving into the lad's keeping his little all of wealth and telling him what to do in case he survived the perils of this most perilous 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.