It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.
It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the "bow oar": "Light ahead." All eyes are turned in that direction.

In a few seconds a twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon us.
"Stern, all; a steamer!" "Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!" is the reply of the coxswain.
"It's a house, and a big one too." It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the darkness.

The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a window as the great shape swings by.

Some recollection is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart.
"There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside.
Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's another!" In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor to the depth of several inches.

It is a large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other.