The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 404

                                
404           THE STORAI'S MURDEROUS FURY.
about seventy years of age. Around Hero's neck is a stout black
collar; to this the old gentleman clung. Hero did the rest, he
swam pulling along his old master from Seventh to Fourteenth
streets, where they found a house standing with veranda piled with
debris but intact, and into a sheltered corner of this the dog
dragged the man for safety. Both were alive, the old gentleman
was much bruised, but his mind was active, and his only grief
was for the loss of his wife and daughter, for save the dog he had
no one.
A DOG'S DEVOTION.
Kind hands did for him all that could be done, and while
feeble and heart-broken he appeared to suffer no pain. The dog
never left him there, the two throughout that fateful Sunday clung
together. Toward 3 o'clock in the afternoon the old man, still sitting
in a rocking-chair, covered in blankets, no dry bed being available,
appeared drowsy. This was only natural from fatigue and
age, but when the head gently bent forward it was the sleep of
death. However, such a gentle passing away of the soul could not
be termed by such a harsh name; it was more a caress, in which
the transition of the soul was wafted from the body.
The dog all these hours had nestled close to the old man's feet
under the blanket, never sleeping, but guarding carefully the
master. When the feet became cold, then the four-footed hero
scented trouble. He tried to lie on them with his body. This not
answering, he licked the cold feet; still no warmth. Then he
sprang into the rocking-chair in which the corpse sat, carefully
covered in sheets, tried to warm the body by covering it as much
as possible with his own shaggy hair. By force the dog had to be
taken away and locked up, for in his instinct he scented something
wrong with the old man and strove to make things right by supplying
the warmth of his own body. Such scenes as this old man's
beautiful death and the dog's deep devotion are among the sublime
lessons.
Photographers are hourly taking views of the ruins. However,
there is a picture about the debris which demands a sketch to