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Captain Somerset said nothing, but nervously paced the deck ; his reputation,
possibly his commission, hung upon the slender thread of a boy’s knowledge.

Little by little the ordinary noises of ship life ceased, the old sailors conversed
beneath their breath, and even the careless middies peered anxiously ahead.

They had now run nearly the allotted two hours, the wind and sea continued
steadily to rise, but the fog held on as thick as ever.

Jack watched the compass narrowly; great drops of sweat stood upon his
brow and he almost repented that he had undertaken the job.

With the freshening wind the ship ploughed through the mist ; before her lay
what? The buoy and safety, or the ragged rocks of the “ Rip?” Jack strained
his eyes to their utmost tension as if to pierce the fog by sheer force of will.
“ Oh! for one moment of daylight,” he groaned; “ one sight of Great Point Light.”

There was a momentary lull in the breeze, flap went the spanker as, the wind
suddenly falling dead calm, the ship rolled sluggishly to windward; and then
patter, patter came the rain falling in great drops perpendicularly from the sky.

“The calm before the storm,” thought Jack; “if this rain beats down the
fog before we get it, we'll be all right.”

“Mind your helm, quartermaster,’ came the warning cry from the officer of
the deck, and the next instant came the first puff of the approaching gale.

Heeling to her gun ports the ship sprang madly forward, and as if by magic
the remnant of the fog in strange fantastic shapes went dancing away to leeward.

“T see it, sir; dead ahead, sir,” shouted the lookout.

Jack sprang to the weather-rail and heaved a heavy sigh of relief as he
recognized the object of his search bobbing on the dark water; but in spit2 of
himself his voice trembled a little as he turned to the officer of the deck,
“‘ Round the buoy, if you please, sir, and stand in close hauled on the port tack.”

“ A splendid landfall, by Jove,” exclaimed the captain, shaking Jack warmly
by the hand. ‘Jack, my boy, you have saved the ship.”

The navigator popped his head for the last time into the chart-box and then
slowly withdrew it. He was a prim, punctilious man, but a just one. Walking
slowly along the bridge to where Jack was leaning on the weather-rail, he ex-
tended his hand. “Mr. Winter, I have done you an injustice; I beg your
pardon,” he said solemnly.

Two days later the storm abated, the frigate in the meantime lying comfort-
ably at anchor under the lee of the horseshoe arms of the island. Although
the wind had gone down, the surf still roared savagely on the south shore, and
Jack pointed out to the captain the place where he had thought of anchoring,
now a seething mass of froth and foam.

“Not a very comfortable anchorage, eh, Captain ?”

“ No, not very,” he answered smiling; “you have saved the old Constitution
that’s a fact, and now if you will make out your bill for pilotage, and” —