W. R. Jones, with fifteen other men, finding the building they were in about to fall, made their way to the water tower and, clapping hands, encircled the standpipe to keep from being washed or blown away.
Mrs. Chapman Bailey, wife of the southern manager of the Galveston Wharf Company, and Miss Blanche Kennedy floated in the waters ten to twenty feet deep all night and day by catching wreckage. Finally they got into a wooden bath tub and were driven into the gulf overnight. The incoming tide drove them back to Galveston and they were rescued the next day. They were fearfully bruised. All their relatives were drowned.
A pathetic incident in the search for the dead occurred Friday. A squad of men discovered in a wrecked building five bodies. Among these bodies was one which a member of the burial party recognized as his own brother. The bodies were all in an advanced state of decomposition. They were removed and a funeral pyre was built, at which the brother assisted and, with Spartan-like firmness, stood by and saw the bodies of the dead reduced to ashes.
On Monday a brakeman of the Galveston, Houston and Northern left Virginia Point and started to walk toward Texas City. He found a little child, which he picked up and carried for miles. On his way he discovered the bodies of nine women. These he covered with grass to protect them from the vultures until some arrangements could be made for their interment.
CHAPTER VII.
Lives Lost and Property Damage Sustained Outside of Galveston—One Thousand Victims and Millions of Value in Crops Swept Away—Estimates Made.
Galveston’s property loss by the hurricane was hardly less than $20,000,000; outside of that city, in Houston and other points in Central and Southern Texas, together with the agricultural and stock-raising districts, the property damage was nearly half that amount, or in the neighborhood of $10,000,000.
Probably seventy-five villages and towns were swept by the storm, and in most of these places there was loss of life.