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

THE BOAT CAPSIZED.

When almost abreast of the house the boat capsized. Then again Brophey showed his bravery and that he was through and through a hero. Instead of striking out alone for the house he thought of his parents and the drowning family. After much difficulty, after having gone under time and time again in his frantic efforts to save his loved ones and the destitute family, he at last succeeded in getting them into the house.

That place they found filled to overflowing with refugees like themselves. The house was creaking and trembling under the terrible force of the water and wind, and Brophey saw that it would be but a little while before it, too, would have to succumb. So he braced himself in a door and waited for the inevitable. It was but a little while till it came. The house went down and all with it except Brophey, who found himself on top of the water in a gurgling and seething mass of timbers, roofs and other debris. He crawled up on one roof only to have another one thrown like a blanket over him.

Thus he struggled for two hours in what was an enormous raft of several hundred broken up houses, going before the wind, being churned together in a huge caldron by the waters. Whole roofs and sides of houses were bobbing, striking, sinking, turning over and moving together like chips in a huge whirlpool. Words can not describe that awful scene. In it all Brophey and hundreds of others were struggling for their lives almost all in vain. Dead bodies of women and children who had succumbed to the inevitable in the early part of the storm, and men and women whom the waters had not yet killed, but were playing with like a cat does a mouse before hurling them into the beyond, were carried hither and thither.