"But I should do the hurricane a grave injustice," he continued, "to leave you boys with the story of Galveston alone. Its terrors were far more widespread than that. On my way here from Galveston, I saw the ravages of the storm inland. Everywhere on the flat prairie near Texas City were ruined houses and outbuildings, many of them absolutely abandoned, others still with a corner occupied by their ruined owners. Trees were broken short off or up-rooted and lying prostrate. The hurricane which had been foiled of the slaughter which had been granted to its predecessor fifteen years before, had swept on, mile after mile, for hundreds of miles, slaying and wrecking as it went. Acres of pear orchards were stripped as though the giant of the winds had drawn each separate branch through his clenched fists. For twenty miles inland the prairie grass lay prostrate. Twelve miles from the shore I saw a fishing schooner there, her masts still standing, and near it lay a child's rocking-horse, a cradle, a boy's baseball-bat and a five hundred pound bale of cotton. "Not fifty yards from the hastily relaid railway track, I saw a strange example of the fury of the waves and wind. On the floor of the first story of a negro shack, without a scrap of furniture around it, with no wreckage or piece of wood to be seen in any direction, a rude cabin indeed, was a large grand piano, its boards warped by the water and the sun, but otherwise uninjured. From what house in Galveston had this floated, to find a resting-place on the floor of an un-roofed and un-walled negro's cabin? Around it was not a sign of wreckage save the bodies of scores of drowned horses and cattle and, among them, many human forms. "No census will ever tell how many were killed in that stretch of prairie between Galveston and Texas City. Years hence men will stumble over human bones on that grassy plain and give burial to some victim of the greatest storm that ever visited American shores. Yet, withal, that the hurricane of 1915 claimed six hundred victims instead of tens of thousands was due alone to the warnings of the Weather Bureau, to the heroism of the men and women of Galveston and to the craft, skill and honesty of the men who built the great sea-wall." CHAPTER X STRUCK BY LIGHTNING There was but little further interest in kite-flying that afternoon, when the young observer ended his story of the Galveston hurricane. The boys had been brought close to danger and they crowded around the stranger with questions concerning the hurricane. The lads were all the more thrilled by reason of the fact that the sky was becoming dark and ominous, and that, even while the stranger spoke, the clouds grew more threatening. "There might be a hurricane coming now," said the youngest of the group, looking fearfully at the sky. "No," answered the observer, "that's nothing but a thunderstorm. You'll never forget the look of the hurricane as it comes near, if you've seen it once."