did. Along in the night the raft struck a tree and was swept from under
them. Gray caught a limb with his wife still clinging to him. By this time he was almost completely exhausted but he managed by a hundred successive efforts to get his wife into the tree.
A little later a colored man was seen coming through the water. Gray called to him to take to the lower limbs and not come higher, for he was afraid the tree with three people on it would be made top-heavy. When daylight came he took his wife in his arms and told the negro to go ahead for a house they saw in the distance, for had there been any holes he wanted to be advised of it before he went into them with his wife, for it was all he could do to push through the water in his exhausted condition.
After walking until 10 o’clock he reached the high land in the Denver resurvey and eventually got to town. Not until yesterday had he sufficiently recovered from his exhaustion to come onto the streets. He is cut and bruised in a dozen places. He says the water in Kinkead addition was ten feet deep.
Robert Park and a party of men came in from Hitchcock Sunday, arriving that evening. They started in a skiff, and finally reached a prairie, over which they carried the boat. Finally they reached water again, and along about noon went alongside the British steamer “Roma,” which was dragged from her moorings in the roads between the jetties, about seven miles up the channel and landed in the draw of the county bridge. They report the steamer in good condition. They got water and food there and came on across.
A GRUESOME SIGHT.
Mr. Park says twenty people arrived at Hitchcock on rafts from Galveston before he left. These had been carried by the storm from Galveston to Hitchcock, a distance of about eighteen miles. They also saw a pile driven from the Huntington wharves high on the prairie far beyond Virginia Point.
A gruesome sight passed along the street Monday afternoon. Workmen in digging bodies from the debris found one of a handsome man with dark hair and mustache and dressed in a light suit of clothes. He was on his knees, his eyes were uplifted, and his clasped hands were extended as in prayer. It was evident that the man had been praying when he was struck and instantly killed. As a rule, the attitudes of those who were found were with hands extended up as if endeavoring to save themselves.
The destruction of the Catholic Orphans’ Home and the loss of seventy-five lives with it was told by one of three boys who came through a terrible experience by dint of good Providence and nothing else. It is a fact that three boys came into the city from there who had passed through a terrible experience. With these three and one reported on the bay shore but four out of a total of seventy-eight people lived to tell the tale.
According to the story all the children were gathered with the Sisters and the two workmen in the chapel on the ground floor in the west wing of the building. The storm was raging terribly outside and they all engaged in prayer. The east wing finally went down and they were driven from the chapel to the floor above, the water coming in and threatening to drown them. Some clambered out on the roof of the part remaining, but not all. Finally along about 8 o’clock—they are not positive as to the time by an hour—the remainder of the building went and the roof went into the water.
DESTRUCTION OF CATHOLIC ORPHANS’ HOME.
What became of the others nobody can say. Campbell only knows that he got out from the building somehow and caught a piece of drift, either a part of the roof or something of the sort. The Murney boy broke through a transom and got out. He drifted for some time and finally caught a tree to which he clung and soon found that the two other boys had caught the same tree. Prior to that they had been separated, but a strange fate attracted them to the same place.
This tree, it developed later, had caught in the masts of the wreck of the schooner “John S. Ames,” which lies almost south of the home. There they remained all night. At one time Campbell was about to give up and cried that he was drowning. The Murney boy caught him and lashed him to the mast with a piece of rope that he found there. In that way was his life saved.
When morning came they found that they were alone in the open Gulf on a tree. The tree soon broke adrift from the mast, and, strange as it may seem, brought them in shore. They finally landed and started west, not knowing which direction to take. They finally brought up at a house something like two miles from the place where the home had been but so recently located. There they found their location, but were unable to get anything to eat because the woman in the house had nothing herself.
So they came on toward the city, but it was a long, hard pull through wet sand, and hungry and faint for the want of fresh water and food. They brought up at a house that had gone through the storm, was partly demolished and at the back of which was another house supporting it. There they remained during Sunday night, and were afraid every minute that the force of the little blow that came up during the night would demolish the place of refuge. But it stood, and in the morning they started on, reaching the home of young Murney during the day. There they got food and dry clothes. The other two boys were taken to the infirmary, where they are being cared for.
NEW FEATURES OF THE CALAMITY.
Another account is as follows and contains new pictures of the scene:
The elements, which had been cutting up didoes and blowing every which way during the preceding twenty-four hours, got down to it in earnest fashion Saturday morning, when a strong wind, accompanied by rain, which first came in great splashing drops which one could almost dodge, but afterwards became a hard, driving rain, began to get in its work.
Along the bay front the waves rose higher and higher and tossed about the small craft anchored in the slips like cockle shells. Striking the bulkheading of the wharves with mighty force the waves broke into clouds of spray, which leaped over the wharves and drenched the men whom duty or curiosity caused to be in that neighborhood.
Although the wind was in the north, a heavy sea was running and the breakers rolled up the beach with angry roars. The little bath houses on wheels scattered along the beach were picked up by the great waves and dashed against the row of little, flimsy structures along the Midway and piled up against them in uneven stacks. Early in the forenoon the Midway presented a picture almost of desolation, filled as it was with debris from the small platforms, stairways and landings along the beach front, which had been carried away and washed up by the sea. At times the waves would recede, leaving the beach almost bare of water, and then, as if gathering force anew they would sweep in, rolling several feet high, passing over the shelving beach, lapping over tracks of the street railway and gushing the water into avenue R.
Early in the forenoon the waves were leaping at times over the trestle work of the street railway along the beach front, making it impossible to operate the cars around the belt, as the water would have burned out the motors. The cars were therefore operated between town and the Gulf on the double tracks of either side of the belt line. A little later in the forenoon the waves undermined the track at Twenty-fourth street and avenue R. They washed under the little Midway houses on the south side of avenue R, which were built on piling, and in places carried away the sidewalks in front of the buildings, which were not thus supported.
THE ANGER OF THE SEA.
The platform which supported the photograph gallery at the Pagoda bath house was washed away. This was not a part of the original structure, and was not as strongly built as the remainder of the bath house. The bath house proper and its pier, extending out to sea, were not at that time (Saturday noon) disturbed by the waves, although the high rollers at times dashed so near the flooring of this and the other bath houses that it looked like a rise of a few inches would punch up the flooring.
The scene at the beach was grand. The sea in its anger was a sight beautiful, though awe-inspiring, to behold. Notwithstanding the wind and the driving rain, thousands of people went to the beach to behold the maddened sea, and the street cars were kept quite busy. Down town, during the early morning, when the rain was not so heavy, there seemed no apparent necessity for getting into rainy day garb to make this trip to the beach, and many people went out in their best bibs and tuckers, to their sorrow. Well dressed men and women disembarked from the cars at the beach and picked their way amid swirling pools of water and the spent waves to get into midway and to pass along to places where a good view of the sea might be obtained.
For a few minutes they succeeded in keeping feet and bodies reasonably dry, but using umbrellas counted for naught, and were soon turned wrong side out or ripped into ribbons, and their owners getting partially wet, abandoned themselves to the inevitable and went around seeing the sights, caring not for the weather, nor worrying about their good duds. Some people, with abundant foresight, appeared on the scene in bathing suits, and, of course, they were right in it from the jump.
At Twenty-fifth street the big waves rolled up the shelving beach, crossed the street railway tracks, leaving the water impounded behind the embankment. These waters backed up in the ditches and the low places of the street as far as avenue N, and the supply being ever replenished, both from the sea and from the clouds, there was no opportunity for this water to run off.
IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE.
The shell man and others of the Midway folk moved their stocks out during the morning to be on the safe side, but others, who have long been acquainted with the sea and who were less timorous, stayed by their places and kept their goods and chattels there.
At that hour the water was on a level with the wharf at pier 23, and was rapidly rising. Later it was almost impossible to navigate along the wharf front on account of the deep water and the high wind. Of course, it was wholly out of the question for any vessels to move for any purpose, and equally impossible for steamers to make an entry into the harbor. The pilot boat would not have been able to get alongside, and if any vessel approached the harbor she would have to put to sea for fear of grounding if she came too close. Several vessels are due.
No attempt at doing any business was made after noon, for it was equally out of the question to load steamers as it was to move them. If damage was done it was the result of pounding. Some cement stored on the pier head was damaged by the water washing up under it in the morning, and as it was not practicable to move it, it is a total loss.
While working with a gang of men clearing the wreckage of a large number of houses on avenue O and Center street, Mr. John Vance found a live prairie dog locked in the drawer of a bureau. It is impossible to identify the house or the name of its former occupant, as several houses were piled together in a mass of brick and timber. The bureau was pulled out of the wreckage a few feet from the ground, where it had been buried beneath about ten feet of debris. The little animal seemed none the worse from its experience of four days locked up in a drawer beneath a mountain of wreckage. It was taken home and fed by Mr. Vance, who will hold the pet for its owner if the owner survived the storm.