After a while, beginning to tire, as we will of every form of excess, I was meditating a return to the War Eagle, when flames, higher and fiercer than before, burst from her stacks, lighting up the heavens with a deeper and wider glow. Thinking some new device was being tried, I sat still, and doing so, felt the increased power of the boat, and this as if she had before been held by some restraining hand. Seeing how it was, our crew raised a cheer, but alas! For as our stern tipped the prow of the Northern Light and victory seemed clearly ours, there came a sickening roar, all too plain, from the hull of the War Eagle. With the sound, and sooner than I can tell, the sky was aflame with fire and steam, and about me, and on my body and upturned face, particles of wood and iron fell in showers, as if dropped from heaven. Following the sound, and without any interlude whatever, the flying vessel, her body burst asunder, began to settle in the boiling water. Seeing this, and aroused by the sight, I sprang to my feet, and letting go the rope, the fierce current quickly drew it through the ring, and I was freed from the sinking boat. Now I bethought me to aid the others, but alas! on looking about, there was not so much as a stick by which to hold or guide the craft in which I stood. In this way, and in agony of grief, and crying out at the top of my voice, I floated away into the gathering darkness as the War Eagle sank beneath the troubled waters. This, as I say, without being able to so much as lift a hand to help my friends. Not so those on board the Northern Light, for immediately the explosion occurred she reversed her engines, and in a moment her boats were dancing on the water and hastening, amid the cries of her crew, to the aid of our stricken people. This much I saw, but only partly and from afar off, so quickly did the current carry me away and out of sight. Standing up and straining my eyes to the utmost, the lights one by one faded out, until I was alone and helpless on the silent river; but of this I neither thought nor cared, for my heart was filled to bursting at the unhappy fate of my late companions. Gladly in my grief would I have stayed to share their death, but instead I was each moment being carried farther away, helpless as driftwood to aid either them or myself. Thus I stood for hours, looking back and mourning till the night was far spent and the moon arose over the distant hills of Illinois. At this, and in a measure soothed by the sight, I know not why, I threw myself down in the bottom of the boat, and so, after a while, fell into a troubled sleep.