He rowed furiously till nearly daybreak, when, sinking to the bottom of the boat, he slept from sheer exhaustion. When he opened his eyes again the sun was high in the heavens. He looked around him for some trace of his last night’s work, but only the great green expanse of water met his eye. There was not a speck on the waters. Of the eight hundred passengers who had set out a week before in pursuit of sin not one remained.
Five days later the BORUS, a merchantman plying between Savannah and New York, picked up a man off Hatteras, drifting about in a boat. He had neither oars nor provisions, and was raving with delirium. He was carried back to New York and taken to Bellevue hospital, where he was identified by the house physician as the man who had left there against orders two weeks before scarcely recovered from brain fever. He had a lucid interval three days later, during which the nurse learned much of the foregoing.
The man died that night muttering of a Palace of Sin which was smitten by the hand of God.