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.