“Not until Ritter’s house went down and I saw the waters rapidly climbing the walls. We had passed through the terrible storm of 1875, and had lived. Since then the island has been raised five feet or more. Why should we not have felt easy? But when the wind and waves began to show their fury, when I saw these extra five or more feet covered by a raging torrent which raced hither and thither, I felt that the end had come. Up the waters came about the fence—up they came and covered the hedge. Up they came and knocked at the door. “Yet I still thought the end would be reached. We had been told that the height of the storm would be at 9 o’clock. At 5 and 6 and 7 the waters continued to climb and the winds to take on new strength. At the last hour they were at the door. What must come, then, at 9? My heart fell then. I had peered out of the window and saw the dreadful enemy assault the house. Then agonized people were heard. It was dark and the spray sped in sheets. Yet it was light enough to see now and then. People in boats and wading came along. Their houses were gone. Mine rocked like a cradle, and I felt the end had come.” Thus said another man: “What were your feelings?” “Nothing but that of complete resignation. I have read much in books of the tableaux of the past appearing to the human mind on the eve of man’s dissolution. In no instance have I found that the survivors of this terrible thing remembered the past. Some were frightened and simply shrieked and laid hold of anything that would relieve them from the embraces of the water. Some were frightened and prayed for mercy. Some were frightened into dumb resignation, partaking of dumb indifference.” NOBLE DEEDS IN TIME OF DISASTER. In all great catastrophes I have yet to know of one that some special act of selfishness and brutality did not occur. There is hardly a great wreck recorded in which is not depicted the brute who pushed women from boats or from spars. In all I have heard of the thousands of incidents connected with this storm, not an instance of that selfishness which would cause one person to deprive another of his means of escape has occurred. Thousands of instances of devotion of husband to wife, of wife to husband, of child to parent and parent to child can be mentioned. One poor woman with her child and her father was cast out into the raging waters. They were separated. Both were in drift and both believed they went out in the Gulf and returned. The mother was finally cast upon the drift, and there she was pounded by the waves and debris until she pulled into a house against which the drift had lodged. During all that frightful ride she held to her 8–months-old babe, and when she was on the drift pile she lay upon her infant and covered it with her body, that it might escape the blows of the planks. She came out of the ordeal cut and maimed. But the infant had not a scratch.