“For three days they were on the hunt. Mounted and accompanied by a team, with burial boxes, they moved across the island in every direction, examining every body they found. During their journey they viewed not less than 150 corpses. Now and again they thought they had found him or her whom they sought. Here it would be a piece of clothing, there a feature, and again the form, but each time only disappointment repaid them for the task of love, devotion and duty they had undertaken. It was an anxious search with hope deferred.
“They had no idea that they would be successful, but so anxious were they to have their relatives given decent burial, so strong was the desire to prevent them being in an unmarked grave, or consigned to the deep, or perhaps cremated with hundreds of others, that they decided to continue until every chance of a success was lost. Thursday at noon they were successful. They had searched for six miles west, and two to two and a half miles across, when suddenly Isaac recognized a shirt worn by a body which he found.
IDENTIFIED BY LAUNDRY MARK.
“It was a blue garment, one the brother had worn when with one of these brothers who was searching, and its color and cut brought to mind days when he and the lost one were together in happiness and in health. They investigated and turning back the collar they found the initials of their lost brother, as the garment had been marked by the laundry. This removed all doubt, and the body was put into a box and prepared for burial. It had badly decomposed, having laid for five days where the waves cast it, beneath the warm rays of a summer sun, and exposed to the elements of the night. With the helpers they succeeded in gathering it tenderly into the confines of a rough box.
“‘They dug out a grave a few feet deep,
And there in earth’s arms they laid him to sleep.’
“They did not abandon the search because of finding one body, but continued it further on, and at 3 P. M. they found the boy. The little fellow was not far from his father, showing that the two had remained together as long as life remained in the parent. He was identified beyond all doubt. He was laid by the father. The two graves were marked, and it is the intention of the surviving brothers to have the bodies removed to the family lot in Dallas as soon as conditions justify. They will continue the search for the body of Mrs. Ed Jalonick and the little girl.”
It is at a time like the occasion of the Galveston storm when real heroes are made, when individuals become men of the hour, and when the true manhood of a man is made known to his fellows. The silent, modest, quiet man of every day life has never the credit that is his due, because he does not seek the notoriety which is necessary. There are men praised by the people of the United States because they were on a boat at Santiago or Manilla, or followed a commander up a hill at San Juan; by Great Britain because he was of Modder river, Ladysmith, or possibly Pretoria; and by other countries because of distinguished bravery in battle.
“They were men who had been schooled to danger, who had gone into the fight, with the one idea in mind, to kill and be killed for the honor of the flag they followed. They went into the conflict believing that it meant death or honors of war, and their heroism was of a character qualified by the conditions leading up to it. Not so with the men who passed through the flood of last Saturday and enrolled their names upon the tablet of fame. There are many instances, but they can not all be told. They were frequent during the terrible times of that day. One of these has already been told, that of the act of the boy of George Walker, of Austin, a little fellow not yet in his teens, who, by his heroic act, saved his aunt, who was all but drowned.”