As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.  Here he was for the moment safe.  But the devastation viewed from this height was only the more appalling.  Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past year’s industry, had disappeared.  He was now conscious for the first time of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together on a slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the flood.  The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.  The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough.  The habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered house.  When day broke he was cold and hungry.

Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of the waters.  Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread before him on which nothing moved.  An awful silence impressed him.  In the afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse, until the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor.  He had but one idea now—­the coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength to swim to it.  He did not know until later that it could no longer follow the old channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and hearing.  With his disappointment and exposure that night came a return of his old fever.  His limbs were alternately racked with pain or benumbed and lifeless.  He could scarcely retain his position—­at times he scarcely cared to—­and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a quick plunge downward.  In other moments of lucid misery he was conscious of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead face of the murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by the flood, staring at him from the water; to this was added the hallucination of noises.  He heard voices, his own name called by a voice he knew—­Captain Jack’s!

Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and plunged downward.  But before the water closed above his head he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light—­of the black hull of a tug not many yards away—­of moving figures—­the sensation of a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand upon his collar, and—­unconsciousness!