The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

GHOSTLY SCENES OF NIGHT.

“As we made our way to the hotel, a thing we did with difficulty, because of the wreckage that covered the streets, we saw only desolation and ruin on every hand. The pale of the moon added weirdness to the chaos and look where we might there was nothing to gladden the searching eye. We passed several small groups of men who spoke in whispers and those we addressed looked at us strangely and wondered what we came for.

“At last the hotel was reached and here most of us found friends and acquaintances who inquired after those we left behind. The city being under martial law, most of our party, after doing all in their power to relieve the anxiety of anxious men and women, disposed themselves about the hotel until morning, it being unsafe to roam about the city at night for fear of being mistaken for vandals and ghouls that have infested the city ever since the storm. To some of us it seemed that morning would never come, but it did come at last, and it came bright and fair.

“I then started out to view the stricken city by daylight and such a scene as I witnessed is beyond the power of words to tell. The wildest flight of imagination can never paint the picture that lay before my view, and if none can imagine it, then there is no way to give one even a faint conception of it in words. The horror of it is beyond the pale of exaggeration, and the worst that may be said cannot even approach it. Acres and acres of houses were scattered in ruins over the earth and beneath the broken and shivered timbers were the decaying bodies of human beings, who suffered tortures worse than death.

“Along the pebbled beach, once the most beautiful in the world, and a scene of wonted gayety, now all is desolation and awe. Human bodies, swollen and unrecognizable, were mingled with those of dead animals and reptiles, and the whole formed a scene so gruesome and so misshapen that the thought of it even sends a sickening thrill coursing through one’s veins.

“To add to the horror of the situation, human hyenas moved stealthily among the dead, robbing those who were powerless to resist, but these ghouls in human guise are meeting with just retribution, for armed sentinels are now on guard and have orders to shoot them down as they would mad dogs.

“If the situation along the East Side was more horrible than that along the West, it was only because more people dwelt there and there were more houses to be destroyed. Along either beach gaunt destruction held full sway, and each wave seemed more cruel than that which it succeeded. Nor were the waves alone in their cruelty, for the winds reveled in maddened fury and seemed to vie with them in spreading ruin and desolation.