“A nightfall dark and wild with wind and storm was followed by a night black and tempestuous, and still the desperate fight went on. Here and there ruddy, flaring torches struggled with the murky gloom, but within their dim halos could be seen the big breakers hungrily licking the tops of the sodden barriers that throbbed and quivered beneath every cruel blow.
“Planters’ wives and daughters stood ankle-deep in mud, filling sacks and helping to lift them upon the shoulders of the men who were carrying them to the levee. Two bold Creoles stood at one weak place, though they felt the levee dissolving beneath their feet. They sank to their knees in the mud and water, but still they stood stubbornly on the sinking dike, piling sacks in the breach, though again and again the flood seemed to be in the very act of overpowering and sweeping them away in the very center of a crevasse. It was a bloodless battle, but many a man has won fame on a gory battle-field who never turned a more steadfast, unflinching gaze into the very jaws of death than did those brave defenders of their homes during that terrible night.”
Suddenly there was a wild outcry and a hurried mustering of forces at the old Morganza levee. But men and materials were no longer of any use. The dull yellow flood poured through the gap like a mighty cataract. Four hundred feet of the embankment were gone in a few moments.
At once there was a sauve qui peut. The volunteer forces of the neighborhood hurried away to save what they could. As the Morganza levee was backed by a wide uninhabited swamp, there was little danger of any lives being lost by the sudden breach, though the people had clung to their homes to the last.
Meanwhile, numerous other breaks were occasioned by the storm. The first occurred at Bayou Sara, and others followed so rapidly that within twenty-four hours fifteen huge crevasses were pouring their torrents upon the land. Two other breaks occurred in the Morganza; and so vast was the volume of water drawn out by the three that the river at Bayou Sara, a few miles below, fell a foot in twenty-four hours, while the decline above was but an inch or two. Despite the gloomy outlook, the men toiled wearily on and finally succeeded in closing most of the breaks; but the great Morganza crevasses defied every effort. Then came breaks in the Atchafalaya, and the turbid waters united and swept southward one hundred miles to the sea. Some towns were abandoned to the snakes and frogs; in others the people put false floors in their dwellings and prepared
PICKING UP REFUGEES.