ything quite as thrilling as
Dr. Cline's drift to sea, but one really astonishing thing did happen.
I'll tell you about it."

"Tell us the whole thing," said Anton, "how the storm started and when
you first got hold of it and what you did, and why they gave you the
medals and--oh, everything!"

"All right," the young observer answered, and nursing his broken arm
with his other hand, he began:

"We first heard about the hurricane on the morning of August 10th, where
it had been seen between the islands of Barbados and Dominica. A little
before ten o'clock that morning, storm warnings were sent to all West
Indian stations. It came as a good deal of a surprise to us at Galveston
because there had been none of the signs which usually go before a bad
tropical disturbance. At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day,
notice of the approach of a storm was sent to all Atlantic and Gulf
stations of the Weather Bureau and the report was sent out by the
wireless naval station at Arlington, Virginia.

"On the morning of the eleventh, the storm was south of the island of
St. Croix, with a hurricane strength wind of sixty miles an hour at
Porto Rico. On the twelfth, it was central off Haiti, and by the next
morning was ravaging Jamaica. Hurricane warnings were sent out by the
Bureau for Key West and Miami. On the fourteenth, the hurricane was
central off the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and on the fifteenth, was central
in the Gulf, gathering force steadily. All vessels were urged to remain
in port. As a result of this warning, shipping scheduled to sail and
valued at forty-five million dollars remained in harbor until after the
hurricane had passed. Had they sailed, few of these ships would have
lived. Hurricane warnings were ordered as far west as Brownsville,
Texas. On Monday, August 16th, the storm approached the coast, and, in
our office in Galveston, its menace began to make itself felt.

"Over the glassy surface of the Gulf there came a long, low swell,
smooth and deep, the waves several minutes apart. Those who saw the
swell remembered the disaster of fifteen years before, when eleven
thousand lives were lost. True, the great sea-wall had since been built
to protect the town, but would it stand? Man against the
hurricane--which would win?

"In the sky, which was a weak, watery blue, appeared the ice-plumes of
the cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the
vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the