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The sight he saw would have been horrid to a healthy mind, but it only moved this man to increased and uncontrollable merriment. The two rails below leading to the stem had arisen before him in a shadowy triangle; and within it were the deck-fittings he had mentioned. The windlass had become a thing of horror, black and forbidding. The two end barrels were the bulging, lightless eyes of a non-descript monster, for which the cable chains had multiplied themselves into innumerable legs and tentacles. And this thing was crawling around within the triangle. The anchor-davits were many-headed serpents which danced on their tails, and the anchors themselves writhed and squirmed in the shape of immense hairy caterpillars, while faces appeared on the two white lantern-towers–grinning and leering at him. With his hands on the bridge rail, and tears streaming down his face, he laughed at the strange sight, but did not speak; and the three, who had quietly approached, drew back to await, while below on the promenade deck, the little white figure, as though attracted by his laughter, turned into the stairway leading to the upper deck.

The phantasmagoria faded to a blank wall of gray fog, and Rowland found sanity to mutter, “They’ve drugged me”; but in an instant he stood in the darkness of a garden–one that he had known. In the distance were the lights of a house, and close to him was a young girl, who turned from him and fled, even as he called to her.

By a supreme effort of will, he brought himself back to the present, to the bridge he stood upon, and to his duty. “Why must it haunt me through the years?” he groaned; “drunk then–drunk since. She could have saved me, but she chose to damn me.” He strove to pace up and down, but staggered, and clung to the rail; while the three watchers approached again, and the little white figure below climbed the upper bridge steps.

“The survival of the fittest,” he rambled, as he stared into the fog; “cause and effect. It explains the Universe–and me.” He lifted his hand and spoke loudly, as though to some unseen familiar of the deep. “What will be the last effect? Where in the scheme of ultimate balance–under the law of the correlation of energy, will my wasted wealth of love be gathered, and weighed, and credited? What will balance it, and where will I be? Myra,–Myra,” he called; “do you know what you have lost? Do you know, in your goodness, and purity, and truth, of what you have done? Do you know–“

The fabric on which he stood was gone, and he seemed to be poised on nothing in a worldless universe of gray–alone. And in the vast, limitless emptiness there was no sound, or life, or change; and in his heart neither fear, nor wonder, nor emotion of any kind, save one–the unspeakable hunger of a love that had failed. Yet it seemed that he was not John Rowland, but some one, or something else; for presently he saw himself, far away–millions of billions of miles; as though on the outermost fringes of the void–and heard his own voice, calling. Faintly, yet distinctly, filled with the concentrated despair of his life, came the call: “Myra,–Myra.”

There was an answering call, and looking for the second voice, he beheld her–the woman of his love–on the opposite edge of space; and her eyes held the tenderness, and her voice held the pleading that he had known but in dreams. “Come back,” she called; “come back to me.” But it seemed that the two could not understand; for again he heard the despairing cry: “Myra, Myra, where are you?” and again the answer: “Come back. Come.”

Then in the far distance to the right appeared a faint point of flame, which grew larger. It was approaching, and he dispassionately viewed it; and when he looked again for the two, they were gone, and in their places were two clouds of nebula, which resolved into myriad points of sparkling light and color–whirling, encroaching, until they filled all space. And through them the larger light was coming–and growing larger–straight for him.