Several hours now passed. The sea subsided steadily, until at length its motion was comparatively trifling, not more than enough to cause a perpendicular pitch to the ship of a few feet, and to send a few waves occasionally over the deck. Wearied and worn out, the boys determined to descend to the quarter-deck, so as to lie down. Pat was unable to make the descent; so Bart remained with him, and curled himself up alongside of him on the mizzen-top. The other boys went down, and Solomon also. Everything there was wet, but as the boys also were saturated, it made but little difference. They flung themselves down anywhere, and soon were fast asleep. But in the main-top Pat was groaning in his pain. The blood was rushing back into his benumbed limbs, and causing exquisite suffering. Bart tried to soothe him, and rubbed and chafed his arms and hands and feet and legs for hours. At last Pat grew easier, though still suffering somewhat from pricking sensations in his arms and legs, and Bart was allowed to rest from his labors. And now, as Bart leaned back, he became aware of a very peculiar sound, which excited all his attention. It was a droning sound, with a deep, swelling cadence, and not long in duration; but it rose, and pealed forth, and died away, to be followed by other sounds precisely similar--regular, recurrent, and sounding all abroad. It was nothing like the roar of the waves, nor the singing of the wind through the rigging; it was something different from these, yet in this darkness, and to this listener, not less terrible. Bart knew it. The sound was familiar to his ears. There was only one sound in Nature of that character, nor could it be imitated by any other. It was the long sound of the surf falling upon the shore. The surf! What did that mean? It meant that land was near. And what land? There was only one land that this could tell of--it was that land which they had been approaching for days; the land which they had watched so closely all the previous day, and to which at evening they had been drawn so near. The name of the land he could not know, but he had seen it, and he remembered its drear and desolate aspect, its iron-bound shores, its desert forests. It was upon this shore that the surf was beating which now he heard, and the loudness of that sound told him how near it must be. It seemed to him that it could not be more than half a mile away at the farthest. And the ship was drifting on! This first discovery was a renewal of his despair. He could only find comfort in the thought that the sea had subsided so greatly. What ought he now to do? Ought he to awake the boys and tell them? He hesitated. Pat had by this time fallen asleep, worn out with weariness and pain. Bart had not the heart to wake him just yet. Suddenly there was an opening in the sky overhead, and through a rift in the clouds the moon beamed forth. Bart started up and looked all around. The morn disclosed the scene.