Dead lay the city, between its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted in
the sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently with plumy jets of steam, no
liner idled at anchor or nosed its slow course out to sea.

The Jersey shore, the Palisades, the Bronx and Long Island all lay
buried in dense forests of conifers and oak, with only here and there
some skeleton mockery of a steel structure jutting through.

The islands in the harbor, too, were thickly overgrown. On Ellis, no
sign of the immigrant station remained. Castle William was quite gone.
And with a gasp of dismay and pain, Beatrice pointed out the fact that
no longer Liberty held her bronze torch aloft.

Save for a black, misshapen mass protruding through the tree-tops, the
huge gift of France was no more.

Fringing the water-front, all the way round, the mournful remains of
the docks and piers lay in a mere sodden jumble of decay, with an
occasional hulk sunk alongside.

Even over these wrecks of liners, vegetation was growing rank and
green. All the wooden ships, barges and schooners had utterly
vanished.

The telescope showed only a stray, lolling mast of steel, here or
yonder, thrusting up from the desolation, like a mute appealing hand
raised to a Heaven that responded not.

"See," remarked Stern, "up-town almost all the buildings seem to have
crumbled in upon themselves, or to have fallen outward into the