They sent word below to Sun Li, who had asked to be notified as soon as the island was in sight, and he came up on deck, carried as usual in his sedan chair by the stolid coolie bearers. Erica ran to him at once, and directed his eyes to the little gray smudge which as yet required super-eyesight to discern against the equally gray water. It was not one of those brilliant days of blue skies and sunshine which are never more beautiful than on Nantucket, but overcast and sunless. Mists drove in ahead of them from the sea, occasionally blotting out even that tiny speck Lis’s quick eyes had been the first to see. The wind had died to a faint breeze that was scarcely strong enough to fill the clipper’s big sails. She moved through the gray water lazily, as if she, like Erica, regretted the end of the voyage. Later the mists parted, and with a change in the wind’s direction, eddied off to the south of the island. The ship was near enough now for the watchers on deck to make out a hint of slender church steeples, a vague outline of roofs, and the higher ground behind them. They rounded Great Point and stood in toward the harbor. Miss Charity and Mrs. Folger came on deck, bringing Milly and little Barbee with them, and they all grouped against the rail, straining eager eyes to catch sight of familiar landmarks. Yet, queerly enough, there seemed to be nothing familiar in the long gray shore line; only the steeples and the higher ground behind the town. Something was strange and different here which they could not quite make out. They might have been approaching a totally unknown port for all they were able to recognize. They turned and eyed each other with a questioning, half-formed apprehension, but no one spoke until Lis broke out in a shaken voice: “Ricky, look! There—_isn’t_—any—town—” And then the others saw too. Down by the water’s edge, and as far inland as they could see, there were no houses standing; only a blackened and twisted tangle of charred wood, fantastically leaning chimneys, and sagging roof-beams…. Miss Charity, unlike her usually calm self, cried out in a frightened whisper, a soft little protesting ghost of a cry, “No—_no_——” and fell silent again, one thin hand clutching at her heart. Captain Eric, who had come up unnoticed behind them, slipped his arm about her shoulders, and held her up, strongly, offering neither comfort nor attempted explanations. As a matter of fact, he was as stunned and bewildered as she. _What terrible catastrophe had overtaken the old gray town during their absence?_ It was incredible, like something seen in a nightmare from which one confidently expects to wake. Only—there it was before their eyes. Blackened wood, torn and twisted roofs, fallen chimneys—— Not the aftermath of a fire, but of a holocaust.