It was only when they came out next morning, Mr. Adams said, that he realized what the storm meant to thousands in the fated city. Almost the first object that met his eyes was the corpse of a child lying on the sidewalk, which staggered him, and with the sickening sights afterward presented to his view, gave him a shock whose gruesomeness it will take a lifetime to efface.
TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF A SURVIVOR.
A letter to a newspaper furnishes the following account of the terrible experiences of one of the survivors:
“I came home from my work Saturday evening about 4 o’clock, with Lewis Fisher. I left Lewis on Tremont street and avenue O, where the water was three feet deep. He said he was going out to help his people, and told me good-bye. So I started for home to see how my folks were. When I got home I found my folks all there, and the water was then five feet deep. I lived one block from the beach. I began to take them out. Our front steps had already washed away. I took them to S. Smith’s house on Seventeenth and O, a big two-story house, thinking it would be safe.
“But it began to grow worse, so I took my father, sister and two smaller brothers on Nineteenth and O, in Mrs. Carlstedt’s house, where there were some thirty people. I told my father to take care of the children, and started back for my mother and brother. On my way I met my friend, Gus Smith, of Nineteenth and O, and he told me that he would go with me and help me get my mother and brother.
“It took us an hour to swim one block, and when we got to the house it had already been washed into the street, and my little brother had been washed outside and was drowning, but I got him in time and took him back inside. Smith and I went inside and there we found a colored family and the Armour family, all asking us to take them away, but it was too late, as the water was then eight feet deep. Finally, the whole top of the house blew off and the water was pouring in, and all the people began to pray.
“The house was twenty-five feet high, and the waves went clean over it. Finally the whole thing fell in, and I grabbed my mother around the waist and Smith took my brother, and down we went. It was two minutes before we had a raft and were on Eighteenth street and O. There were twenty-eight in the house, and all we could save were seven people, as it was so dark that you could see no one. We got one little negro by the name of Albert of the negro family. We stayed out on the raft all night, without a stitch of clothes on, and the rain was something awful. It felt like some one was shooting buck shot at us from a distance.
CAPTURED SOME BLANKETS.
“About 2 o’clock in the morning we caught two trunks and broke them open, and it looked like a godsend to us, as both were full of blankets. We took these blankets and covered the women and children, or else I believe they would have frozen to death. About 5 o’clock in the morning I got up and started in search of my father and sister and other two brothers, and the first thing I did when I got off the raft was to step on a dead body.
“I then went a few steps further and found Mrs. A. C. Bell, of Eighteenth and O, and Mrs. Junker, of O, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets, both dead. We had come from Seventeenth and Beach to Nineteenth and N. Right across the street was Mr. Sewall’s house, and I went over there to search for the rest of my folks and found them there all right, so I went back and got my mother and brother off the debris, and brought them all together once more.