It was no deceptive passage the frigate had entered. It widened as she advanced, the water becoming smoother; but still before her lay stretched out the moonlit ocean; the stars, also, glittering with an almost dazzling brilliancy in heaven's dark blue arch. The channel was passed through, but still who could tell the numberless dangers which might yet remain to be encountered. Before another watch was set, "breakers ahead--breakers abeam!" was once more echoed along the decks. "Then, to my mind, our sand has pretty well run, and we and our brave old ship are doomed," exclaimed Ned Faintheart, putting his hands in his pockets, with a deep sigh. "Doomed by whom?" cried Jack. "I tell you what, mate, I haven't forgotten, and I hope I never may, the saying of an old friend, a black, as good a foul as ever lived, when we both lay expecting little better than a felon's death, though undeserved, at the hands of our fellow men, `Never mind, Jack, something save us this time, too. We trust in God.'" The breakers roared as loudly as before over the coral reefs, but, still unharmed, the British frigate flew quickly by them. A graze almost from the outer point of the rugged surface of a reef might hurl her to destruction; but neither coral reef, nor rock, nor sandbank stopped her course. Day came at last, and what a wide expanse of troubled waters broke upon the sight of the weary seamen! No one had that night turned in; all kept the deck, steady at their stations, ready to do what men might do to save the ship or their lives; at all events to obey their officers to the last. When the sun with an ensanguined glow shot upward from the ocean, his beams glanced on a dark object which lay ahead. The lookouts soon proclaimed it to be a dismasted ship. As on they rushed in their still headlong course, not only did they see that she was dismasted but was keel upward, the seas constantly breaking over. A turn to starboard of the helm carried the frigate clear, but how their hearts wrung with sorrow and regret--alas! unavailing--when they saw clinging to the keel some eight or more of their fellow creatures. Some, apparently, could scarcely move, their fast waning strength barely enabling them to hold on; but others wildly waved their hats and caps, shouting, though their voices could not be heard, for help. Utterly impossible would it have been to lower a boat. Again the poor wretches shouted in chorus and held out their hands imploringly as the frigate drove onward by them. On, on she went. Many a heart, like Jack Buntline's, bled for them, and he and others kept their eyes on them; and there they clung and knelt along the keel, holding out their hands till the frigate sailed far beyond their sight. Still on the frigate flew, yet through every danger they passed unharmed. "Messmates," said Jack, "God has been with us. God dwells on the deep. God is everywhere."