As he neared his destination he perceived--as he had not hitherto, because of the potency of the brandy--that the island of his beclouded mirage was the wreck of the _Cherokee Rose_, still aground on the sand-bar, although waters swirled around her, and fish swam through her cabin doors and the slime and ooze of the river had befouled the erstwhile dapper whiteness of her guards and saloon walls. He lay on his oars for a space, regarding with meditative eyes the ruin, analogous, it seemed to the far-reaching ruin that had its inception here and that had trailed him so ruthlessly many a day. In his dreary idleness he was sensible of a species of languid curiosity as to the extent of the ravages of water and decay in comparatively so short a time. Only a few months ago, in the past October, he had been aboard the packet, when trim and sound, and immaculately white and fully equipped, she had run aground on this treacherous bar, where her bones were destined to rot. He wondered that the wreckers had left so much, unless, indeed, their operations were frustrated by the sudden impending rise of the waters. The craft lay listed to one side, the hull evidently smashed like an egg-shell by the furious onslaught of the storm, but a part of the superstructure--the texas and the pilot-house--was still above water, though canted queerly askew. Floyd-Rosney rowed briskly to the stair that formerly served to ascend to the hurricane deck, the skiff running up flush with the flight. He sprang out--first trying the integrity of the wood with a cautious foot, and tied the painter firmly to one of the posts that supported the hurricane deck, leaving the boat leaping on the ripples, as if seeking to break away from some ponderous creature of its own kind that would fain drag it down into the hopeless devastations of a lair in the depths. With a deep sigh Floyd-Rosney slowly ascended the few steps of the stair above the current, and stood looking drearily down upon the structure wherein were lived those scenes so momentous in his fate so short a time ago. As he walked along the canted floor, his white cap in his hand, his head bared to the breeze, he glanced now and again through the shattered cabin lights down into the saloon, seeing there the water continuously swirling in the melancholy spaces, once full of radiance and cheer and genial company. All the doors of the staterooms had been removed, both those opening on the guards and the inner ones, of which the panels were decorated with mirrors and which gave upon the saloon. A vague jingle caught his attention; a fragment of an electrolier still clung to the ceiling and sometimes, shaken by the ripples, its glass pendants sent forth a shrill, disconsolate vibration, like a note of funereal keening. Suddenly from amidst that weird desolation of shifting waters a face stared up at him. It was unmistakable. He saw it distinctly. But when he looked again it was gone.