They went on, by the dense woodland, beneath the low sun. A cypress swamp ran back for miles. In this hour the vast, knotted knees, dimly seen, innumerable, covering all the earth, appeared like sleeping herds of an ancient monster. The wash of the water was like the breathing of such a host. All the country here was very low, and over it there began to be drawn a purple veil. It was as still as a dream. The boat passed between two islets covered with a white flower, and came into sight of a point of land. “Cape Jessamine!” said the young negro. It lay painfully fair, an emerald breadth with groups of trees, seen through the veil like a fading dream which the mind tries to hold, and tries in vain, it is so fair! There was magic in the atmosphere; to look down the river was to look upon a vision. Edward looked, bent forward, his eyes steady and wide. “Row fast!” he said in his friendly voice. “I want to go back now.” They rowed fast, by monstrous white cypresses, under boughs hung with motionless banners of moss, by fallen trees, decaying logs, grotesquely twisted roots. The boat kept in the shadow, but the light was on Cape Jessamine. Presently they could see the lofty pillars of the house, half veiled in foliage, half bare to the sinking sun. They were now not half a mile away. The distance lessened.... They were skirting a muddy shore, rowing amid a wild disorder of stumps that rose clear from the water, of dead and fallen trees, dead and far-flung vines. There came to the boat a slight rising and falling motion. “What’s dat?” said the young negro. His fellow turned and stared. “Lak er swell from er steamer, only there ain’t any steamer on the Mississippi these days—” “O my Lawd, what dat sound?” The boat rocked violently. “Oh, Destruction, not there!” cried Edward Cary. Cape Jessamine went down, down. They saw and heard; it was before their eyes; the bending pillars, the crashing walls, the trees that fell, the earth that vanished, the churned and horrible water.... They saw the work of the river, the sapper who worked with a million hands.... Shrieking, the negroes drove the boat head into the muddy shore, leaped up and caught at the overhanging boughs. Their frail craft was stayed, resting behind a breakwater of dead limbs. “O God-er-moughty! O God-er-moughty!” wailed the young negro. Edward stood like marble. It had been there celestially fair—his port and haven and the wealth it held. It was gone—gone like a mirage. The red sun sank and left the wild world a wide waste.... The darkness, which, in this latitude, followed at once, was unwelcome only because it closed the door on search, hopeless and impossible as would search have been in that cauldron of earth and water. The inner darkness was heavier than that which came up from the east. Through it all the long night throbbed like a dark star, now despair, now hope against hope.