When the night had passed and the water receded, wreckage, dead animals and the corpses of parishioners surrounded the devoted party. There was nothing to eat, and, nearly dead with exhaustion, the preacher and his little flock set out on foot to seek assistance. They were too weak to continue far and sank down on the plain, while Mr. Davis pushed on alone. Five miles away a farmhouse was found, partially intact, and securing a team Davis returned for his half-dead party.
For two days they remained at the home of the hospitable farmer and then set out afoot to find a hamlet or make their way over the desert-like peninsula to Bolivar Point. In the heat of the burning sun they plodded on along the water front, subsisting upon a steer which they killed and devoured raw, until finally they came upon an abandoned and overturned sailboat high on the beach.
With a united effort they succeeded in launching the boat and with improvised distress signals displayed managed to sail to Galveston. There, because of red tape, they were unable to secure clothing, although they were given a little food and transportation to Houston. Clad in an old pair of trousers, a tattered shirt and torn shoes, with his family in even worse plight, the circuit rider of the Patton Beach, Johnston’s Bethel, Bolivar Point and High Island Methodist churches rode into Houston, dirty, weak and half-starved. Here the family were sent to a hospital and cared for.
They were sent to Dickinson, Tex., where they had relatives, who aided them until the Methodist church came to their relief.
Bolivar reported that up to September 16, 220 bodies had been found and buried and many were still lying on the sands. Assistance was needed. It was a fact generally commented upon and merely emphasized by the clergyman’s experience, that while succor was being rushed to Galveston other sufferers were neglected. The relief trains en route from Houston to Galveston traversed a storm-swept section where famishing and nearly naked survivors sat on the wrecks of their homes and hungrily watched tons of provisions whirling past them while there was little prospect of aid reaching them.
MAN HAD HIS BROKEN NECK SET.
One of the most difficult operations known to medical history, and a rarity, was performed by Drs. Johnson, Lucas and Ryon Monday morning, September 17, at a hospital in Houston.
F. H. Wigzell, of Alvin, a suburban town not far from Galveston, was blown half a mile in his house and suffered dislocation of the cervical vertebræ. His head fell forward on his chest and he had no power to raise it. It was a plain case of broken neck and the physicians operated successfully. They placed the neck in a plaster cast and the man will live for years to come.
MOST TERRIBLE WEEK OF HIS LIFE.
L. F. Menage of Chicago, who returned from Galveston the Friday night succeeding the disaster, reached the Tremont Hotel, Galveston, the Friday evening before the terrible storm began. He said it had been the most terrible week in his experience; the most awful two days a man could imagine were the Sunday and Monday succeeding the hurricane.