The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 385

DIED IN EFFORTS TO SAVE OTHERS. 385
ting along all right, notwithstanding this, and were making for
the house below them, when, just ahead, he saw a man and
woman and several children making for the boat. When it came
near enough they grasped its sides and begged to be taken in.
It was indeed a trying situation. There he was, with his
aged parents with him in a boat already overloaded, with the wind
blowing almost a hundred miles an hour and carrying all before
it, with the waves dashing everything to pieces and hurling the
timbers of the houses against whatever might be in the way, with
a force that only the most vivid imagination can picture. It was
a terrible ordeal, but like the man that he is, he could not leave
those begging parents and crying children without making at
least an effort to save them. So, after great difficulty, the woman
and children got aboard, and the perilous journey to what they
hoped would be a haven of refuge was again begun, or rather it
had been going on all the time, as the boat was being carried down
on the crest of the waves with frightful velocity.
THE BOAT CAPSIZED.
When almost abreast of the house the boat capsized. Then
again Brophey showed his bravery and that he was through and
through a hero. Instead of striking out alone for the house he
thought of his parents and the drowning family.
After much
difficulty, after having gone under time and time again in his
frantic efforts to save his loved ones and the destitute family, he
at last succeeded in getting them into the house.
That place they found filled to overflowing with refugees like
themselves. The house was creaking and trembling under the
terrible force of the water and wind, and Brophey saw that it
would be but a little while before it, too, would have to succumlb.
So he braced himself in a door and waited for the inevitable. It
was but a little while till it came. The house went down and all
with it except Brophey, who found himself on top of the water in
a gurgling and seething mass of timbers, roofs and other debris.
He crawled up on one roof only to have another one thrown like
a blanket over him.
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