advice to you, Peter, is, `Always keep your presence of mind, and, while life remains, never despair.'" CHAPTER TWENTY. The _Pocahuntas_ continued on her course to the northward, with variable weather. I believe we had got a considerable way to the eastward of where we should have been; but of that I have no certain knowledge, as a foremast man has no means of ascertaining the ship's position, except when she makes the land, unless the officers choose to tell him. At last a fine westerly breeze sprung up, and we went gaily along. Now, however incredible what I am going to relate may appear especially as happening to O'Connor, yet it is, I can assure my readers, perfectly true. Terence had been sent on the fore-topgallant-yard--what to do I do not recollect, for I was aft at the time--when by some means or other he lost his hold and fell over the yard. Another man, who was on the yard and saw him fall, ejaculated, "Poor Terence, this time it's all over with him!" Falling from that height on the deck, his brains would inevitably have been dashed out of his head; but, as he fell, the hitherto sluggish wind filled the foresail, on the bulge of which, at the very instant his body striking, it was thrown with considerable force forward right into the sea. As before, Terence preserved his consciousness, or, at all events, recovered it as he struck the water. He struck out bravely alongside the ship. "Heave us a rope, shipmates," he sung out. I ran to the side, and was just in time to throw him a rope as he dropped past. He caught hold of it, and hand over hand he hauled himself on board into the mizzen-chains. From thence jumping into the waist, he shook himself dry, like a Newfoundland dog, and went forward again to his duty, as if nothing had happened. "Peter," he observed afterwards to me, when we were together, "if I never had any religion before, I think I should have some now. You see, when I felt myself going, I thought it was all up with me, and never was so surprised in my life as when I found myself in the water. Tell me, Peter, do you think it was God who made the foresail belly out at the moment it did?" "I think it was by His will it so happened," I answered. "I don't think chance did it." "But do you think He would take the trouble to look after such a poor fellow as I am?" he asked. "A sparrow, we are told by the Bible, falls not to the ground that He knows not of," observed Andrew Thompson, who had sat himself down near us. "Then don't you think, messmate, He would look after a human being, with a soul to be saved?" "I feel that He preserved my life; but I don't understand it," replied Terence.