ravating to the people on the steamer to see that
cockle-shell of a yacht dancing safely along over the shoal on which
their "leviathan" had struck, and to hear Ford Foster sing out: "If we'd
known you meant to run in here, we'd have followed some other pilot."

"They're in no danger at all," said Dab. "If their own boats don't take
'em all ashore, the coast-wreckers will."

"The Government life-savers, I s'pose you mean?"

"Yes, they're all along here, everywhere. Hark! there goes the distress
gun. Bang away! It sounds a good deal more mad than scared."

So it did, and so they really were--captain, pilot, passengers and all.

"Captain Kinzer" found that he could safely run in for a couple of
hundred yards or so; but there were signs of surf beyond, and he had no
anchor to hold on by. His only course was to tack back and forth, as
carefully as possible, and wait for daylight, as the French sailors were
doing, with what patience they could command.

In less than half an hour, however, a pair of long, graceful,
buoyant-looking life-boats, manned each by an officer and eight rowers,
came shooting through the mist, in response to the repeated summons of
the steamer's cannon.

"It's all right now," said Dab. "I knew they wouldn't be long in coming.
Let's find where we are."

That was easy enough. The steamer had gone ashore on a sand-bar a
quarter of a mile from the beach and a short distance from Seabright, on
the Jersey coast; and there was no probability of any worse harm coming
to her than the delay in her voyage, and the cost of pulling her out
from the sandy bed into which she had so blindly thrust herself. The
passengers would, most likely, be taken ashore with their baggage, and
sent to the city overland.

"In fact," said Ford Foster, "a sand-bar isn't as bad for a steamer as a
pig is for a locomotive."

"The train you was wrecked in," said Dab, "was running fast. Perhaps the
pig was. Now, the sand-bar was standing still, and the steamer was going
slow. My! what a crash there'd have been, if she'd been running ten or
twelve knots an hour with a heavy sea on."

By daylight there were plenty of other craft around, including yachts
and sail-boats from Long Branch, and "all along shore," and the Long
Island boys treated the occupants of these as if they had sent for them
and were glad to see them.

"Seems to me, your're inclined to be inquisitive, Dab," said Ford, as
his friend peered sharply into and aroun