THE TRAIL OF THE HURRICANE
"Two o'clock, Tuesday morning, August the seventeenth, Nineteen Hundred
and Fifteen!
"Slowly down and across the white, faintly ruled paper wrapped about the
revolving drum, I watched the long-shanked, awkward pen of the barograph
in our Weather Bureau station at Galveston. In the jerky, scrawling
fashion of a child writing his first copy on a slate, I saw the pen
gradually draw what looked like a rough profile map--a long declining
plateau, a steep and then a steeper slope, a jagged ugly valley--
"The valley of the shadow of death!"
The boys clustered closer round the speaker, the man who had seen and
lived through, the Galveston hurricane.
"We knew well, the three of us in the Weather Bureau," he went on, "that
descending zig-zag line meant that the hurricane, then beginning to rage
over our heads, would increase in fury and in ruin, until the other
wall of that strangely-drawn valley should begin to form under the
halting pen. Thus we watched and waited.
"'Read the wind velocity,' my chief said to me.
"I focused a glass on the recorder, holding a lantern in my other hand.
"'Ninety miles an hour, sir,' I said.
"'It'll be a good deal more than that,' he answered. 'I only hope we
don't have a repetition of 1900.'"
"That was the worst ever, wasn't it, sir?" asked Anton.
"It was the most destructive storm that the United States ever saw," the
Galveston weather observer answered, "but, as a storm, it wasn't nearly
as violent as the one we've just been through."
The speaker, who had his arm in a sling and who was still frail and weak
from the injuries he had received during the hurricane, looked round at
the boys. Being the Forecaster's nephew, he had come to his uncle's
house to recuperate and the work of the League had fired his
imagination.
"Tell them of the 1900 storm first," said the Forecaster.
"You tell them, Uncle," his nephew replied; "you remember that better
than I do, and then I'll tell the boys my adventures in last week's
storm."
"Yes," put in Fred, "you tell us, Mr. Levin."
"Very well," said the founder of the League, and he began:
"I suppose, measured by the loss of life and property, the Galveston
hurricane of 1900 was the worst catastrophe that wind and water has ever
brought to America. On Galveston Island alone, over six thousand people
were killed, and five thousand more in the inland coast country. The
ruin and loss of life was caused by a storm wave, which swept in from
the Gulf in advance of the hurricane's vortex. This wave, four feet in
depth, struck the already submerged island with almost irresistible
force and entirely destroyed the city for ten blocks inland. Over five
hundred city blocks were ravaged and two hundred blocks were laid level
to the ground. Three thousand three hundred and thirty-six houses were
destroyed."
"Where did it begin, sir?" asked Anton. "In the West Indies?"
"Undoubtedly," the Forecaster answered, "but, unlike last week's storm,
we knew very little about it, before it came. Three days before the
hurricane struck Galveston, storm warnings were hoisted, although, at
that time, advices from Cuba showed that it had developed but little
force. By the next afternoon it was beginning to wake up to true
hurricane strength and the steamer _Louisiana_ almost foundered in the
middle of the Gulf.
"In Galveston, our barometer commenced falling that afternoon, and by
next morning the situation began to look serious. The barometer was
still falling steadily and high cirrus clouds of the mares'-tails
variety, that always run in advance of the hurricane, were clearly
marked.
"That afternoon over the waters of the Gulf came the long low swell,
each wave one to five minutes apart, which is the sure sign of trouble.
Though the wind was from the north and north-west, the swell from the
south-east steadily increased and the tide began to rise. Before
mid-night, the Weather Bureau had sent warnings to the newspapers to
urge special precautions for the next day, as a rising tide and possible
hurricane threatened disaster. At breakfast, the next morning, every one
in Galveston read these warnings, none too soon, for at nine o'clock,
the edge of the storm struck the city.
"The wind was steadily rising, and shifting by gusts at five minute
intervals, until one o'clock in the afternoon, when it reached storm
velocity. After that, it began to increase in fury. Every subscriber of
the telephone company was warned personally from the Weather Bureau.
Hundreds of people who could not be reached by telephone besieged the
Weather Bureau, seeking advice. Dr. Cline, the chief of the station, who
had been directing all precautionary measures since five o'clock in the
morning, went to his home for lunch at half-past three o'clock that
historic afternoon. The wind was then blowing fifty miles an hour.
"'I reached home,' wrote Dr. Cline, 'and found the water around my
residence waist-deep. At once, I went to work assisting people, who were
not securely located, into my residence, which, being large and very
strongly built, I thought could weather wind and tide. About 6:30 P. M.,
one of the other weather observers, who had been on duty since the
previous midnight, reached my residence, where he found the water neck
deep. He informed me that the barometer had fallen below 29.00, that no
further messages could be got off to Washington, or anywhere else, as
all the wires were down, and that he had advised every one whom he
could see, to go to the center of the city; also, he thought that we had
better make an attempt in this direction.
"'The roofs of houses and timbers, however, were flying through the
streets as if they were paper, and it appeared suicidal to attempt a
journey through the flying timbers. Just at this time, the anemometer in
the Weather Bureau office registered one hundred miles an hour and blew
away soon after. In the next hour the wind rose to a velocity of one
hundred and twenty miles an hour. Many people were killed by flying
timbers, about this time, while endeavoring to escape to town.
"'The water rose at a steady rate from 3 P. M., until about 7:30 P. M.,
when there was a sudden rise of four feet in as many seconds. (Hundreds
of people, undoubtedly, were killed and drowned during those four
seconds.) I was standing at my front door, which was partly open,
watching the water, which was flowing with great rapidity from east to
west. The water at this time was about eight inches deep in my
residence, and the sudden rise of four feet brought it to my neck before
I could change my position. The tide rose in the next hour nearly five
feet additional, making a total tide in that locality of about twenty
feet.
"'By 8 P. M. a number of houses had drifted up and lodged to the east
and south-east of my residence, and these, with the force of the waves,
acted as a battering ram against which it was impossible for any
building to stand for any length of time. At 8:30 P. M. my residence
went down, with about fifty persons who had sought it for safety, and
all but eighteen were hurled into eternity. Among the lost was my wife,
who never rose above the water after the wreck of the building.
"'I was nearly drowned and became unconscious, but recovered through
being crushed by the timbers and found myself clinging to my youngest
child, who had gone down with myself and my wife. Mr. J. L. Cline joined
me five minutes later with my other two children, and together with a
woman and child whom we had picked up from the raging waters, we drifted
for three hours, landing three hundred yards from where we started.
There were two hours that we did not see a house or any person, and from
the swell we inferred that we were drifting to sea, which, in view of
the north-east wind that then was blowing, was more than probable.
During the last hour that we were drifting, which was with south-east
and south winds, the wreckage on which we were floating knocked several
residences to pieces. When we landed about 11:30 P. M. by climbing over
floating debris, the water had fallen four feet. It continued falling,
and on the following morning the Gulf was nearly normal.
"'While we were drifting, we had to protect ourselves from flying
timbers by holding planks between us and the wind, and with this
protection we were frequently knocked great distances. Many persons were
killed on top of the drifting debris by flying timbers, after they had
successfully escaped from their wrecked homes. In order to keep on the
top of the floating masses of wrecked buildings, one had to be
constantly on the look-out and continually climbing from drift to drift.
Hundreds of people had similar experiences.'
"Fearful as was the disaster," the Forecaster continued, "it would have
been incalculably worse had it not been for the Weather Bureau warnings.
Hundreds of people were saved by retiring to the upper portion of the
town during the afternoon of the hurricane and no amount of
foreknowledge could have told the sudden four-foot rise in the Gulf.
Galveston learned her lesson, too, as was shown in the recent
hurricane."
"I don't understand those hurricanes a bit," declared Fred, "they don't
seem to act like tornadoes, and instead of coming from the west, like
all the rest of our weather, they come up from the south-east. How is
that, Mr. Levin?"
"The West Indian Hurricanes," the Forecaster replied, "are storms which
are also called tropical 'cyclones' and which in the China Sea are known
as 'typhoons,' and the fearful stories that one has read of the typhoon
in the China seas applies equally to the hurricanes that strike our Gulf
coasts.
"Like all other tropical cyclones, the West Indian Hurricanes are formed
by an upward rising current of air over a moist heated area. There are
five cradles of such storms. One is over the Pacific ocean south-east of
Asia and gives the coast of China, the Philippine Islands and Japan the
typhoon. A second and a third are in the north and the south parts of
the Indian Ocean. A fourth, which is less frequent, is found east of
Australia.
"The cradle of the West Indian Hurricanes is in the North Atlantic,
about six to eight degrees north of the equator and from two hundred to
a thousand miles east of the West Indies. These hurricanes, when first
seen, are quite small but they increase in size and in motion as they
come westward. Most of them, when they reach the Lesser Antilles--where
Uncle Sam's new islands lie, the Virgin Islands--also increase in
whirlwind character, and turn northwestward, skirting the northern edge
of Porto Rico. This is the mean track. About seventy-five per cent of
them pass over a regular storm trail between Bermuda and Charleston,
most of these coming close to the coast and sweeping circularly away
from the land at Cape Hatteras. At the latitude of New York, the curve
has taken them half way round the circle and they disappear as violent
westerly gales, though beginning as easterly hurricanes.
"As you will have noticed, nearly all these storms come in the autumn.
That is because the cradle of the hurricane is the doldrums, and in
August and September, the Atlantic doldrums are at their furthest north.
The Chinese typhoons are most frequent in the same months of the year,
from the same cause."
"And this last one, sir," Tom asked, "the one that blew down my
anemometer last week and which smashed up the old windmill, was it just
like the hurricane of 1900?"
"I think I'll let my nephew tell you about that," was the reply; "he was
in the thick of it, and the people of Galveston gave him a medal for
bravery in connection with it, so he ought to be the one to speak."
"Gee, did you get a medal!" exclaimed Fred. "Do let's have a look at
it."
The young weather observer shook his head.
"I haven't got it with me," he said, a little embarrassed. "But if you
chaps want to hear about the Hurricane, I guess, perhaps, I can do
that." He smiled. "I don't know that I've anything quite as thrilling as
Dr. Cline's drift to sea, but one really astonishing thing did happen.
I'll tell you about it."
"Tell us the whole thing," said Anton, "how the storm started and when
you first got hold of it and what you did, and why they gave you the
medals and--oh, everything!"
"All right," the young observer answered, and nursing his broken arm
with his other hand, he began:
"We first heard about the hurricane on the morning of August 10th, where
it had been seen between the islands of Barbados and Dominica. A little
before ten o'clock that morning, storm warnings were sent to all West
Indian stations. It came as a good deal of a surprise to us at Galveston
because there had been none of the signs which usually go before a bad
tropical disturbance. At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day,
notice of the approach of a storm was sent to all Atlantic and Gulf
stations of the Weather Bureau and the report was sent out by the
wireless naval station at Arlington, Virginia.
"On the morning of the eleventh, the storm was south of the island of
St. Croix, with a hurricane strength wind of sixty miles an hour at
Porto Rico. On the twelfth, it was central off Haiti, and by the next
morning was ravaging Jamaica. Hurricane warnings were sent out by the
Bureau for Key West and Miami. On the fourteenth, the hurricane was
central off the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and on the fifteenth, was central
in the Gulf, gathering force steadily. All vessels were urged to remain
in port. As a result of this warning, shipping scheduled to sail and
valued at forty-five million dollars remained in harbor until after the
hurricane had passed. Had they sailed, few of these ships would have
lived. Hurricane warnings were ordered as far west as Brownsville,
Texas. On Monday, August 16th, the storm approached the coast, and, in
our office in Galveston, its menace began to make itself felt.
"Over the glassy surface of the Gulf there came a long, low swell,
smooth and deep, the waves several minutes apart. Those who saw the
swell remembered the disaster of fifteen years before, when eleven
thousand lives were lost. True, the great sea-wall had since been built
to protect the town, but would it stand? Man against the
hurricane--which would win?
"In the sky, which was a weak, watery blue, appeared the ice-plumes of
the cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the
vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the storm. At the horizon,
a wicked, dull glare gave threat of the typhoon's approach. All as yet
was soundless, only the far-flung clouds told of the fury which was
hurling them ahead of the circling hurricane below.
"Then! A low, whirring whistle of the wind. Not like the moan of an
approaching tornado is this wind, but like the high-pitched note of an
engine running smoothly at high speed. Characteristic and peculiar,
boys, is that heralding wind, with a throbbing note in its character.
That day, too, came the white squalls, lasting a minute or two each,
with puffs of furious wind and a bucketful of rain, like bombs fired in
advance of the hurricane by some huge æolian howitzer. Steadily the whir
of the advancing wind became louder, steady, without gusts, and more and
more frequent became the white squalls.
"Up, up and ever up came the sea, forced by the iron hand of the grim
wind-tyrant behind. The swells came faster and the tide rose. Against
the sea-wall the billows fell back, baffled, but, inch by inch, the
waters of the Gulf rose against the city. Man's hereditary enemy, the
Ocean, prepared itself for attack. Inch by inch the water gained, wound
its sinuous way through the channel in the bay, backed into nook and
cove and, long before the storm came, swirled a foot deep over land
which never before in the city's history had been under water, even in
the great storm of 1900.
"All day long, since midnight of the day before, three of us, up in the
Weather Bureau, kept watch by our instruments, at the telegraph wire and
the telephone. We had the men of Galveston to deal with, men who were
not afraid of danger, men who knew well what the word 'hurricane' meant.
All through that day an army was organized, an army of men that rested
neither for food nor sleep, warning those who were in the path of
danger, leading the women and children to safety, carrying the old and
sick upon their shoulders from regions where death was threatening.
"Our chief, at the Weather Office, summoned volunteers with motor-cycles
and these men went to every corner of the city with the news of the
approaching disaster. Through the streets rode these Paul Reveres,
carrying the cry of the warning, and on that Sunday not one house in the
entire city of Galveston was left unwarned. The city had lost six
thousand lives in the hurricane of 1900. It was not to be caught napping
a second time.
"At Seabrook, Texas, across the bay, Professor Stearns, a co-operative
observer, personally visited every house in that section on Sunday, the
fifteenth, and again on Monday. Before the hurricane, eighty-eight
houses stood there; after the hurricane, there were three. Yet every one
was saved, except two people, who had laughed at the weather warnings.
"Steadily the sea rose, all day Monday, and equally steadily the wind
increased. The Fire Department joined in the work of protection. The
police joined in the work of saving. As yet the hurricane had not come,
but, through the Weather Bureau warnings, no one was allowed to pass
into a fool's paradise of security.
"The summer evening came on with the whistling whir of the wind changing
its note to an angry rage. In our little office at the top of the
building, it looked as though we should be blown away. But there was too
much to do for any man to leave. Still, had it not been for the
thoughtfulness of one friend, none of us would have had anything to eat.
We did not have a let-up of any kind for fifty-six hours.
"A wall of water swept towards the island, and before it became too dark
to observe, in the early twilight one could see the wind-lashed waters
of the bay begin to heap themselves into broken and irregular waves,
each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They
broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a
suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the
wind struck us, in three nerve-racking blasts.
"With the savagery of the elements at their worst, the registering-pen
of the anemometer in our office began to write its message. Raging in
fury, the tempest leaped to eighty miles an hour, to a hundred miles an
hour, to a hundred and twenty miles an hour. The air in the middle of a
hurricane is estimated to have the weight of half a million ocean liners
and four hundred and seventy-three million horsepower. Imagine a weight
of several billion tons being hurled with five hundred million
horsepower at a speed of two miles a minute! That, boys, was the storm
that plucked at our little office in the sky, and that was the force
which picked up the billows of the sea and hurled them at the seawall
built by the hands of Man.
"At the signal given by the titanic winds, the waves drove in from the
gulf and from the bay and smashed into a thousand pieces the houses of
the lower section of the city. But the wind and the waves found nothing
on which to wreak their vengeance except the empty shells of houses.
Without our warnings, thousands of people would have been there and
thousands of lives lost. But the hurricane was foiled of its prey,
because of the writing of the little instruments at the top of the
Weather Bureau tower.
"When the storm was at its height, our anemometer blew away. When she
went, the wind was howling cheerfully along at seventy-five miles an
hour. The chap who was with me, a plucky fellow, suggested that we
should go up on the roof and put up a new one. I thought myself that if
we went up there, we'd be carried off like a couple of straws. But I
wasn't going to have him think that I was scared. So up we went. My
word, boys, but it was blowing! We worked for half an hour when the gale
got under my coat and blew it open like a sail. In a fraction of a
second I was being driven breathless to the parapet.
"Through the storm I heard a faint voice crying:
"'Take it off!'
"I tore the coat off and it flew up in the air like a crow, but it was
almost too late. I was thrown against the parapet like a bullet. My
shirt-sleeve tore and flew to ribbons, and I became conscious that my
arm was hurting horribly. I fought my way back against the wind over to
the roof and helped the other chap with the anemometer, which had nearly
been erected when the wind caught me, and we got down the trap-door to
the office of the Bureau. Then I keeled over. My arm was broken. My
partner fixed it up as best he could."
"And you went on working?" asked Fred.
"Naturally," the young observer answered. "I wasn't going to give in
just because of a broken arm. Besides, there was work to do, work worth
doing.
"Far out to sea, meanwhile, was occurring one of the strangest stories
of the sea. The annals of the ocean hold many thrilling escapes, but
none, perhaps, more startling than that of the stranding of the
three-masted schooner _Allison Doura_, which passed through the eye of
the Galveston hurricane. Obed Quayle, a Cape Cod sailor who was one of
the men on board, told me the story.
"'We were six days out of Progresso, Mexico,' he said, 'with a cargo of
bales of sisal. The weather had been fair, with a goodish bit of head
winds, but we reckoned to make Mobile on Sunday, the fifteenth. On
Friday the weather began to look dirty and there was a long rollin'
swell from the eastward that I thought was going to yank the booms out
of her.
"'At eight bells of the second watch, the wind shifted, and any one
could see with half an eye that there was trouble brewin'. The sea smelt
of a storm. We made everything snug alow and aloft, put in double reefs
and lay by.
"'At two bells of the afternoon watch, the gale struck us, and it struck
us hard. Captain Evans Wood, the skipper, a mighty good seaman, handled
the craft well, but our foretopmast was snapped right out before the
gale had been on us an hour.
"'The jib-boom, too, went with the crash and the nasty mess of timber
and shrouds, floatin' to leeward, began to hammer at our hull in an ugly
fashion. A couple of us got at the wreckage as best we could, but before
we had cut it adrift, the _Allison Doura_ had sprung a leak and four of
us went to the pumps.
"'While we were workin' at the wreckage of the foremast, the schooner
was pooped and the wheel was carried away. Bill Higgins, a young fellow
who was at the wheel, was swept against the rail and had his head split
open.
"'I've seen some bad weather in my time, but never just in that way.
With the mizzen boom we rigged up a fore jury-mast and made shift to
hoist a storm staysail to give us steerin' way and rigged up a tiller
for steerin'. The wind was whistling like all possessed. It was askin'
more than any vessel had a right to stand, and around midnight the fore
staysail was blown clean out of the bolt ropes and she lost steerage
way again. We couldn't hold her to the wind.
"'With losin' steerage way so much and without bein' able to hold her up
to the wind at all, we couldn't run out of the storm. The gale drove us
in and in to the centre of the hurricane. Somewhere around dawn on
Sunday mornin' the wind decided to show us what it really could do. We
were runnin' before the wind with a triple-reefed mainsail and not
another stitch. "Why weren't we under bare poles," you asks? Because
there was a sea chasin' after us with every wave looking like a whale
out of water. We weren't lookin' to get pooped, any more than we had to.
The mainmast went with a crash.
"'That left it nasty. The mizzen-mast, bein' the only one left standin',
took her down by the stern and the waves runnin' along behind slapped us
in the quarters good and proper. The skipper he give us orders to cut
away the mizzen-mast, to lighten her.
"'It didn't take much cuttin' neither. The axes hadn't more than gotten
through one of the weather shrouds, when the gale took the mast and
chucked it over the side. That left us with the fore jury-mast that we'd
rigged up, but not a stitch of canvas. The ship was as naked as a
nigger baby in the Cannibal Islands.
"'We did our best with it, of course, and dug up a stretch of storm
canvas about the size of a leg-o'-mutton sail and lashed that to the
jury foremast and the stump of the bowsprit. With that gale cuttin' off
our ears, it was all the sail she could carry. Bill, we had him lashed
near the tiller we'd rigged up, not havin' a wheel, and by-n-by, most of
us was wishin' we was lashed. But the old hooker stood up under it well,
and though she was buried nearly all the time, her nose came right out
of the green.
"'We'd have done anything in the world to beat north-east, for we knew
the hurricane was goin' to the north-westward, but we couldn't do
anything but run before the wind in our crippled state and the wind was
blowin' north-east. It was shifting northerly and then westerly and we
all knew that we were bein' driven into the very middle of the storm.
The gale grew fiercer and fiercer, the sea was lashed to a mass of foam
and in the shriekin' of the hurricane we couldn't tell, half the time,
whether we were under water or above it.
"'Bill, with his broken head, stayed put at the tiller, the skipper
never went below, Cookie tried to get some grub and the other four of us
were lashed to the pumps. It was rainin' in torrents, too, but that
didn't make any difference, for there was so much water that you
couldn't tell whether it was the waves or the spray or the rain that was
drownin' you; all we knew was that we were gaspin' for breath in an
atmosphere that seemed about half air and half water.
"'Then, quite suddenly, the wind died down, and the rain fell from the
sky as though the sea had been picked up and were bein' tilted over the
ship. The clouds, racin' by and so low that they seemed almost as if you
could reach up and touch them, flew overhead so fast that you couldn't
believe it was a real sky you were lookin' at. It seemed like a painted
piece of metal driving across the sky on an aeroplane. It fairly made me
giddy to watch them. The winds died down, and suddenly became quite
calm.
"'I've seen some seas, too, in my time, but never nothin' like this.
Waves, no matter how high, I've been used to all my life. I've seen seas
over the banks of Newfoundland that would look like a mountain, but
waves like those in the eye of the hurricane I never saw before and I
never hope to see again. They came from the east and the west, from the
north and from the south. They met in the middle and struck each other,
making whirlpools that set the schooner spinnin', they rose up and
fought against each other, they swerved and leaped and jumped. One end
of the schooner was yanked this way and a wave would come along and yank
it to the other, cross currents pitched her nose down, and while her bow
was down, another would slap her in the stern.
"'We was all lashed to the pump wheels. We were bruised and battered and
sore. I never thought we'd get out of it. And, steadily, while lyin'
almost without enough wind to fill our one small sail, we were pitched
and tossed and shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. How the timbers of the
ship ever held together, I don't know. We sprung another leak and while,
before, we had been able to have ten minutes' spell in every hour, now
we not only had to keep pumping steadily, but we had to keep those
handles going at a swingin' pace. Cookie came and gave us a hand at the
pumps and started some of the old chanties. The sun came out and shone
clear above us and all the clouds disappeared. You might have thought it
was a warm, mild day in summer, only for the orange-colored ring all
round the sky and that boiling spot of a sea. We went on pumpin'.
"'It got so quiet in the eye of the hurricane that I felt as if I wanted
to scream, and when Cookie stopped singin' for five minutes, I could see
the glare of madness comin' into the men's eyes. For all I know, it may
have been in my own. Bill was the first to go. He dropped the tiller and
came shriekin' along the deck with his sheath knife, yellin' for the
wind to begin again. The skipper drew a revolver, ready to shoot him if
necessary. But I saw Bill was comin' for me, and before he could reach
me with his knife, I got him one in the right on the point of the jaw.
One of the other men went to the tiller, while Cookie and the skipper
lashed Bill fast to the stump of one of the masts, standin' him upright,
so that when he came to, he wouldn't be able to hurt any one.
"'The other men at the pumps began to talk wildly. We hadn't no water.
Our deck-casks had been carried away, with all our boats and everything
movable, and we couldn't get at the tanks below, because we couldn't
open the hatches. They was battened tight and if you so much as lifted a
corner of the tarpaulin, the whole Gulf of Mexico would tumble in and
there would be the end of us.
"'One of the chaps, however, insisted on scoopin' up with his hands the
briny water that flowed from the pumps. It was mixed with bilge water
and smelt horribly. He went mad, too. But we couldn't afford to lose any
man's work and we lashed his hands to the pump handle. He went mad in a
happy fashion and pumped wildly, singin' and talkin' in a way that made
your heart curdle to hear it. Still, he pumped. The clouds began to form
again round us, the same racin' clouds, the orange rim came nearer and
we knew that we were once again approachin' the edge of the hurricane.
There happened to be a little food in the galley and a scrap was given
to each man. If we were going under, there was no need to drown hungry.
So, faintly, but with quickenin' loudness, the whirring roar of the
hurricane rose into a shriek and the fury hit us again.
"'I suppose I went on pumpin', I suppose we all went on pumpin', for the
vessel stayed afloat, but what happened after we passed into the
hurricane again, I can't tell you. I was deafened, stunned, blinded. I
think I must have gone mad, too. Our trysail blew out right away, and
the tiller that we had rigged up went as well. The bulwarks were laid
flat with the deck. The skipper and one of the men were lashed to the
stump of the mizzen mast, Bill, who had come to again and was ravin',
was lashed to the jury foremast, and the other four of us were lashed to
the pumps.
"'Whether I pumped for a day, a week, or a century, I'll never tell you.
It seemed to me that I had been drivin' round that pump wheel for
thousands and thousands of years. I remember that I thought that I was
dead and that I had been sentenced to turn the wheel of a ship's pump
forever. On Saturday afternoon I started my trick at the pumps, and
maybe half a dozen times before midnight, I had ten minutes' spell. On
Sunday I never left the handles and the last bite I had to eat was in
the evenin'. All day Monday the four of us, lashed to the pumps, had
never a stop, nor a bite to eat, nor a drop to drink. We laughed; how we
laughed! I must have laughed for hours. We would have killed each other
to stop, but the skipper had lashed our wrists to the pump handles. Did
we stop? No one could ever tell. Did we pump without stoppin'? No one
could ever tell that, either. Once in a while my brain cleared, and I
saw the skipper, sagged, unconscious, dead, I thought, by the mizzen
mast, and I heard the ravin's of Bill, lashed to the fore.
"'In the night, I suddenly saw the lights of a town. It was Galveston,
and we were drivin' right on for it. I was so glad that I sang and
shouted. At last, at last we were goin' to be wrecked. Then, perhaps,
there would be rest, unless indeed I were already dead and pumpin'
forever. We drove on and on, while I shouted--and went on pumpin'.
"'A sea picked us up and threw us at the sea-wall, the seventeen foot
high sea-wall. Just before we struck, I saw the Captain move and look
up. The schooner was thrown out of the water, as a porpoise jumps,
vaulted the sea-wall and came to solid ground with a crash that broke
every timber. We landed stern first, and the wave that followed us tore
off our bow and foredeck and threw them clear over the vessel. The
foredeck was found, after the storm, a hundred yards southeast of the
maindeck. The bow was found eight blocks away, in the centre of the
business district of the city.
"'We stopped pumpin'. There weren't any pumps any more. Of the seven of
us, five were unconscious when a rescuin' party reached us, through the
hurricane, four hours later. Two of us were crippled for life, and it
was many a long day before Bill was free from the madness which had
begun with the crack on the head when the wheel was swept away.
"'Daylight of Tuesday found me in bed, with an army surgeon
straightenin' out my broken bones. The hurricane still raged over
Galveston. We had been derelict for two days and a half, at the pumps
for fifty-seven hours, without food or water for forty hours, yet not a
man was lost. No other dismasted vessel has ever lived through the eye
of a hurricane and been tossed over a sea-wall into the business streets
of a city. Yet seven of us, all Americans, still live to tell the
tale.'"
The young observer paused and looked at the boys. They were all very
still.
"And the beach," the young observer continued, "that once white beach
with its stretches of sand, what did that look like, beyond the
engineers' parade ground, where the wrecked schooner lay? Mis-shapen,
distorted, blotched, drabbled and crimsoned, it spread away to the
horizons, east and west, its scars showing under the rays of the sun
which shone out from the mares' tails of the departing hurricane. Part
of it had disappeared under the waters, now rapidly subsiding. The
great causeway was a mass of ruins, but the sea-wall, the two-million
dollar sea-wall, stood with its front to the ocean, grimly defiant
still, the conqueror against the rage of the tempest, and an unwrecked
Galveston shone triumphant.
"But I should do the hurricane a grave injustice," he continued, "to
leave you boys with the story of Galveston alone. Its terrors were far
more widespread than that. On my way here from Galveston, I saw the
ravages of the storm inland. Everywhere on the flat prairie near Texas
City were ruined houses and outbuildings, many of them absolutely
abandoned, others still with a corner occupied by their ruined owners.
Trees were broken short off or up-rooted and lying prostrate. The
hurricane which had been foiled of the slaughter which had been granted
to its predecessor fifteen years before, had swept on, mile after mile,
for hundreds of miles, slaying and wrecking as it went. Acres of pear
orchards were stripped as though the giant of the winds had drawn each
separate branch through his clenched fists. For twenty miles inland the
prairie grass lay prostrate. Twelve miles from the shore I saw a fishing
schooner there, her masts still standing, and near it lay a child's
rocking-horse, a cradle, a boy's baseball-bat and a five hundred pound
bale of cotton.
"Not fifty yards from the hastily relaid railway track, I saw a strange
example of the fury of the waves and wind. On the floor of the first
story of a negro shack, without a scrap of furniture around it, with no
wreckage or piece of wood to be seen in any direction, a rude cabin
indeed, was a large grand piano, its boards warped by the water and the
sun, but otherwise uninjured. From what house in Galveston had this
floated, to find a resting-place on the floor of an un-roofed and
un-walled negro's cabin? Around it was not a sign of wreckage save the
bodies of scores of drowned horses and cattle and, among them, many
human forms.
"No census will ever tell how many were killed in that stretch of
prairie between Galveston and Texas City. Years hence men will stumble
over human bones on that grassy plain and give burial to some victim of
the greatest storm that ever visited American shores. Yet, withal, that
the hurricane of 1915 claimed six hundred victims instead of tens of
thousands was due alone to the warnings of the Weather Bureau, to the
heroism of the men and women of Galveston and to the craft, skill and
honesty of the men who built the great sea-wall."