There was no longer any island—just buildings protruding from the Gulf, with the mainland miles away. Down the street filled with surging water, the spire of a church bent in the wind and then let go as the tower collapsed. The side of a brick building crumbled. As each terrible gust held sway for a few moments, the air was full of debris. The top story of a brick building was sheared off. The scene was like that caused by the destructive blasts at the center of a tornado but, instead of the minute or two of the twister, it lasted for hours. Darkness, under low racing storm clouds, swiftly closed over the city in the deafening roar of giant winds and the crash of broken buildings. The frightened observers saw that the right front sector of the hurricane was bearing down on the island. Out at the beach, block after block of houses, high-raised to keep them above the tide marks of previous storms, had been swept into the center of the city and were being used as battering rams to destroy succeeding blocks, until a great pile of wreckage held against the mountainous waves. After an hour or two that seemed like an eternity, the hurricane center began crossing the western end of the island, and the city on the eastern end was swept by enormous seas which brought the water level to twenty feet behind the dam of wrecked houses. Everything floated, many frame buildings, or what was left of them, being carried out into the Gulf. The Cline house disintegrated and more than thirty people in it drowned, among them Isaac’s wife. The others drifted on wreckage, rising and falling with huge waves and trying desperately to hold timbers between them and the wind, to ward off flying boards, slate, and shingles. One woman, seeing her home was giving way to the wind and going down in the water, fastened her baby to the roof by hammering a big nail through one of his wrists. He survived. How many drowned or were killed in that awful night was never known. The estimates finally rose above six thousand. Doubt about the number was due to the presence of many summer visitors at the beaches and, besides, there was no accurate check on the missing, partly because the cemetery was washed out and the recently buried dead were confused with the bodies of storm victims. The aftermath was horrible beyond description.