a block away from the thoroughfare, and on the edge of a
lagoon of yellow water, whose main current was the thoroughfare he was
seeking, and between whose houses, submerged to their first stories, a
steamboat was really paddling. Other boats and rafts were adrift on
its sluggish waters, and a boatman had just landed a passenger in the
backwater of the lower half of the street on which he stood with the
crowd.

Possessed of his one idea, he fought his way desperately to the water
edge and the boat, and demanded a passage to his office. The boatman
hesitated, but James Smith promptly offered him double the value of his
craft. The act was not deemed singular in that extravagant epoch, and
the sympathizing crowd cheered his solitary departure, as he declined
even the services of the boatman. The next moment he was off in
mid-stream of the thoroughfare, paddling his boat with a desperate but
inexperienced hand until he reached his office, which he entered by the
window. The building, which was new and of brick, showed very little
damage from the flood, but in far different case was the one opposite,
on which his eyes were eagerly bent, and whose cheap and insecure
foundations he could see the flood was already undermining. There were
boats around the house, and men hurriedly removing trunks and valuables,
but the one figure he expected to see was not there. He tied his own
boat to the window; there was evidently no chance of an interview now,
but if she were leaving there would be still the chance of following
her and knowing her destination. As he gazed she suddenly appeared at
a window, and was helped by a boatman into a flat-bottomed barge
containing trunks and furniture. She was evidently the last to leave.
The other boats put off at once, and none too soon; for there was a
warning cry, a quick swerving of the barge, and the end of the dwelling
slowly dropped into the flood, seeming to sink on its knees like a
stricken ox. A great undulation of yellow water swept across the street,
inundating his office through the open window and half swamping his boat
beside it. At the same time he could see that the current had changed
and increased in volume and velocity, and, from the cries and warning
of the boatmen, he knew that the river had burst its banks at its upper
bend. He had barely time to leap into his boat and cast it off before
there was a foot of water on his floor.

But the new current was carrying the boats away f