reef?" asked Rastus, fairly shaking with fear.

"Start dat jib," thundered the old man. "Give her de bonnet an' de
ma'nsail up to dat fastest patch."

The boys jumped to the halyards, and the boat sprang forward with
renewed speed, careening over until she was half under, and slightly
hauling on the wind.

"Ef I kin keep her offen de reef twill hit lightens up, we'se all
right," whispered Sandy; and suddenly, looking after the retreating
cloud, out of which in the gloom now appeared the tops of the
mangrove-trees, he shouted exultantly, "Give her de jib," and, with a
lunge at the tiller, the vessel fell away and dashed onward at the wall
of rock and foam.

"For de Lawd's sake, yo' ain't gwine to jump dat reef, is yo'?" cried
Rastus, in an agony of terror.

But it was too late to question the old man's intentions: we were
already in the back swash of the breakers. "Cotch suthin!" he shouted
again, as our craft on the crest of a mighty roller shot onward to
seeming destruction.

On either side the bare coral rock was visible, as the waves gathered
for another onward rush; yet we did not strike. A second roller raised
us high in air, and, hurled forward with the speed of the wind, we were
buried in the seething foam; but the next moment our craft shook off the
sea, and we glided away on the smooth waters of the inner reef. A few
minutes later the sun was out again, and one of the strangest phases of
life on the reef had come and gone.

"I 'spec' dat was a narrer 'scape," said old Sandy, "but I tuk de only
chance. We was boun' to strike somewhere, an' de squall jes' got off in
time for me to take bearin's of disher five-foot channel; an', it's a
fac', I'se been fru a heap o' times, but dat was de wustest, sho'
'nuff."

From Sandy's orders given at the approach of the squall, the reader
might possibly infer that the sable mariner was commander of a
ninety-gun frigate, while in point of fact he was only skipper of a very
disreputable fishing-smack. But he had been nearly all his life a "boy"
on a government vessel, and now, having retired, from either habit or
fancy he still kept up the man-of-war discipline, and when under more
than ordinary excitement roared out a flood of orders that savored of
both navy and merchant marine, uttering them with all the enjoyment of a
ranking officer on his own quarter-deck. They were, however, well
understood by Sandy's sons, who constituted the port and starboard
watches of the