Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us--the wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened. It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the “bow oar”: “Light ahead.” All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon us. “Stern, all; a steamer!” “Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply of the coxswain. “It's a house, and a big one too.” It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart. “There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside. Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's another!” In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I spring toward him with an exclamation: “Joseph Tryan!” He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on his shoulder, and say: “Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?” He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their peace. I make one more effort: “Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!” He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he repeated to himself “The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--Espiritu Santo” over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to fix in his memory. I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully by the hand and said: