In the widespread commotion of the flood it was fortunate for the _Aglaia_, even though so far up stream--distant in the bight of the bend--that steam was already up in the boilers. Forging up the river, against the current, at her maximum speed, the yacht in the seething turmoil found no safe anchorage till near the bar where the derelict lay. Here she swung round and the officers sought to inaugurate measures to recover if it were possible the body of Floyd-Rosney, who had indubitably perished in the submergence of the mansion. The whole region was aroused and aghast at the magnitude of the disaster. From the deck of the yacht were visible hurrying groups as the population pressed toward the ill-fated scene. The skipper’s megaphone was in constant requisition as being an eye-witness of the calamity he alone could give authentic information. Randal Ducie, hastening down to his levee, was met on the summit by the information that his ancestral estate had ceased to exist, swept from the face of the earth as completely as if it had never been. Its restoration had long been the object nearest his heart, its sequestration in alien possession was the hardship of his life. But he showed scant emotion. Some subtle, inexplicable premonition of catastrophe infinitely heart-rending annulled the sense of loss. “Where’s my brother?” he demanded irrelevantly, and despite the remonstrances of the by-standers he threw himself into a skiff at the landing and pulled out on the tossing, turbulent tide. As the rage of the river subsided the search was joined by others, and a wild rumor of some disaster to Adrian Ducie quickly pervaded the vicinity. The finding of his rowboat on the Arkansas shore did not prove his landing, according to Floyd-Rosney’s forecast, for the craft was caught in a tangle of saw-grass in a marshy swamp where footing was impracticable. The old negro to whom Floyd-Rosney had spoken in the afternoon was now returning from his errand down the river, which was gray with a slowly gathering mist, and melancholy with a cast of the silent and pallid moon. He hove near the little fleet of rowboats that roved the shadows and asked a question concerning the appearance of the missing man, with whom he thought it possible he had had some conversation an hour or so ago. “He looks like me,” said Randal Ducie, throwing his face into high relief with an electric flashlight, and turning with poignant hope toward the boatman. “Oh, no, sah! No, sah!” disconsolately admitted the old darkey, blinking in the glare. “Nebber saw two folks more onsimilar. Mr. Ran Ducie, I knowed you, Sah, from way back. Knowed yer daddy. Dis man looked like he thunk I war de wum o’ de yearth, an’ de yearth war built fur him, though I never p’sumed ter talk ter him. ’Twar him fust p’sumed ter talk ter me. He war dressed beautified, too, with white flannel suit, an’ a white cap, an’ handsome ter kill.”