Death was merciful to the people of Johnstown; he was cruel to his prey at Galveston, and delighted in the tortures he was enabled to impose before he placed his icy hand upon them and bade them come.
Perhaps the only parallel in history to the Galveston visitation was the destruction, in 79 A. D., of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The frightened pleasure-seekers of those doomed cities could see the red lava stream bearing down upon them as it was vomited up from the bowels of Vesuvius and thrown out from the mighty maw of the crater, but even then they were mercifully stifled by the tremendous, never-ending shower of ashes which soon enveloped them and completely covered their homes.
They did not stand for hours, with the blackness of the night around them, listening to the roar of the volcano’s eruption and hear their death knell sounded long before they were compelled to undergo the actual pain of an awful death; they were caught as they sought safety in flight and stricken down while endeavoring to get beyond the reach of the sickle of the grim reaper; they could move and act in accordance with their impulses which prompted them to make a flight for life, and they succumbed only after a desperate struggle.
It was different at Galveston. The men, women and children were not permitted even the small but precious boon of falling while battling with the grim destroyer; they were caught and imprisoned, even as those who were done to death during the time when the Inquisition reigned, and, on the way to execution, were, it might be said, compelled to bear the very cross upon which they were to be impaled.
There is no record since time began of such a long-drawn-out agony as that which the devoted people of Galveston endured during the period intervening between the advent of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and the final imposition of the death penalty.
Fathers saw their wives and babes crushed by the wreckage flung aloft and around by the fury of the gale, or drowned in the swift running current; wives saw their husbands and children torn from them and swept from their sight forever; children saw their parents disappear in the murky, turbid waters of the flood.
Men saw the dead faces of their loved ones they would have deemed it a joy to save as they were borne along upon the bosom of the waters. Men invited destruction in their efforts at rescue, only to realize how weak and utterly futile was their strength in comparison to the irresistible power of the enraged elements. Men died desponding because they could not save those they had cherished and heretofore protected, and went down in despair and gloom.
At Johnstown the released waters tore their way through the beautiful valley of the Conemagh with the rush and speed of a giant avalanche and enfolded their victims in their merciless embrace; the inhabitants were, in the twinkling of an eye, borne from the sunshine of life to the gloom of the valley of the shadow; they may have felt a momentary terror before they succumbed, but it was all over in an instant.
At Galveston, the condemned simply waited for the inevitable; they clung to the brief remaining supports and died a thousand deaths before death claimed them; they stood upon the brink of eternity and cried in vain for the succor they well knew would not come; they prayed for mercy, but there was none.
When the waters of the gulf leaped upon the island where the beautiful city sat in all her glory the people fled to the high places and saw the flood creep higher and higher until it overcame them. Although it was not until the darkness of the night had long since settled upon them they had known in the afternoon that Galveston was doomed. The hurricane would not permit them to escape, but sundered all communication with the mainland and then laughed at their puny efforts at preservation.