their vengeance except the empty shells of houses.
Without our warnings, thousands of people would have been there and
thousands of lives lost. But the hurricane was foiled of its prey,
because of the writing of the little instruments at the top of the
Weather Bureau tower.

"When the storm was at its height, our anemometer blew away. When she
went, the wind was howling cheerfully along at seventy-five miles an
hour. The chap who was with me, a plucky fellow, suggested that we
should go up on the roof and put up a new one. I thought myself that if
we went up there, we'd be carried off like a couple of straws. But I
wasn't going to have him think that I was scared. So up we went. My
word, boys, but it was blowing! We worked for half an hour when the gale
got under my coat and blew it open like a sail. In a fraction of a
second I was being driven breathless to the parapet.

"Through the storm I heard a faint voice crying:

"'Take it off!'

"I tore the coat off and it flew up in the air like a crow, but it was
almost too late. I was thrown against the parapet like a bullet. My
shirt-sleeve tore and flew to ribbons, and I became conscious that my
arm was hurting horribly. I fought my way back against the wind over to
the roof and helped the other chap with the anemometer, which had nearly
been erected when the wind caught me, and we got down the trap-door to
the office of the Bureau. Then I keeled over. My arm was broken. My
partner fixed it up as best he could."

"And you went on working?" asked Fred.

"Naturally," the young observer answered. "I wasn't going to give in
just because of a broken arm. Besides, there was work to do, work worth
doing.

"Far out to sea, meanwhile, was occurring one of the strangest stories
of the sea. The annals of the ocean hold many thrilling escapes, but
none, perhaps, more startling than that of the stranding of the
three-masted schooner _Allison Doura_, which passed through the eye of
the Galveston hurricane. Obed Quayle, a Cape Cod sailor who was one of
the men on board, told me the story.

"'We were six days out of Progresso, Mexico,' he said, 'with a cargo of
bales of sisal. The weather had been fair, with a goodish bit of head
winds, but we reckoned to make Mobile on Sunday, the fifteenth. On
Friday the weather began to look dirty and there was a long rollin'
swell from the eastward that I thought was going to yank the booms out
of her.

"'At eight bells of the second watch