“The broad pampa between Houston and Galveston had been flooded. The towns which in the last ten years had grown were scared and torn by this fiend. Its anger was shown in pastures as well as in towns, and yet none knew the fury of it. There were reports of destruction further on, and the truth of them impressed each man in the cars as the cars counted off its rattleteteck in toll-off the miles.
“Against a barbed wire fence the bloated carcasses of cattle had floated, their swollen limbs stiff toward the sky, and yet others browsed around in the meadow now which was a roaring sea but four days ago. The sight was the first he saw of death, and every man in the car, as to avoid the fear that arose in the mind of each, began to express wonder how this could be, that is, that some of these poor brutes were dead and others living. There were vessels of all tonnage, kinds and degrees on the prairie.
“Out there was a tramp steamship, the other way was the dredge boat; there were yachts, schooners and launches, but near us was the hobby horse of a child. And so help me, I would rather have seen all the vessels of the earth stranded high and dry than to have seen this child’s toy, standing right out on that prairie, masterless. Because one represented—well, why, say God, man’s heart is so weak. But surely he will forgive it when it is soft for those who are weak.
“Debris of all kinds covered the prairie. It was from Galveston, because it could be from no other place. Every ant hill was covered with the remnants of homes in the city, six miles away. There were lace curtains, furniture of all kinds, but mostly of the cheap kind. There were toys, ladies’ toilet articles, bed clothes, and, in fact, everything that goes to make up a home. This point was Texas City, six miles away from Galveston, across the bay. The town had suffered badly.
GENTLE AS A COUNTRY POND.
“Human lives were lost there, and the agony of it was great, but above all was the idea, ‘What of across the bay?’ It was six miles dead across, and a schooner was in waiting to take us over. But before it landed there was a chance of observation of the bay, in which the waters now gently lisped. For the bay was as gentle as a country pond. It lisped and kissed the few blades of grass that grew down where the rise and fall of the ridge was natural. It did not moan like the sea. It merely gurgled. But every little wave threw up and agitated the dead. Bloated horses and cows which provident housekeepers in the city across the water had owned and petted were there. Chickens, rats, dogs, cats and everything, it seemed, that breathed, was there, dead and swollen and making the air nauseous.
“But by their sides were people. The worn-out people of the district, having saved their own lives and buried their dead, were quick to respond to natural instincts and do right by their kind. I saw them take swollen women and swollen men and swollen children and with quick shift place them in two-foot graves. It was terrible, but what could they do?
“There were no burial services. The men who did work were simply doing what they could to relieve the air of them. They were not gentle, but how could they be gentle, when the bodies lay there with their black faces, with their terribly swollen tongues and the odor of decomposition threatening those who lived?
“In the debris from Galveston was everything. I was struck with the idea that this must have impressed the people that the world had come to an end. For twenty-five miles on the land into the interior this disorderly element raged. It destroyed and it mangled, and when it ceased really the sea had given up its dead and the secrets of life were revealed, for walking among the debris I found a trunk. It had been broken open by the waves.
“Letters were blurred by the waves. I picked up one, and it began, ‘My darling little wife,’ and I closed it and threw it among its fellows on the drift. She was dead. She had kept this letter. Their sacred relations were exposed by this terror to those who would read them. There were dozens of men who picked up those letters. No one read them, for man is not so bad after all.