e with a bit of
plank. She was a plucky girl, full of nerve and energy, and stood upon
her frail support in evident obedience to the command of the operator.
She made two or three bold strokes and actually stopped the course of
the raft for an instant.

Then it swerved and went out from under her. She tried to swim ashore,
but in a few seconds she was lost. Something hit her, for she lay
quietly on her back, with face pallid and expressionless. Men and women
in dozens, in pairs and singly; children, boys, big and little, and wee
babies were there in among the awful confusion of water, drowning,
gasping, struggling and fighting desperately for life.

Two men on a tiny raft shot into the swiftest part of the current. They
crouched stolidly, looking at the shores, while between them, dressed in
white and kneeling with her face turned heavenward was a girl seven
years old. She seemed stricken with paralysis until she came opposite
the tower and then she turned her face to the operator. She was so close
they could see big tears on her cheeks and her pallor was as death. The
helpless men on shore shouted to her to keep up courage, and she resumed
her devout attitude and disappeared under the trees of a projection a
short distance below. "We could not see her come out again," said the
operator, "and that was all of it."

"Do you see that fringe of trees?" said the operator, pointing to the
place where the little girl had gone out of sight.

"Well, we saw scores of children swept in there. I believe that when the
time comes they will find almost a hundred bodies of children in there
among those bushes."

Floated to their Death.

A bit of heroism is related by one of the telegraph operators at
Bolivar. He says: "I was standing on the river bank about 7.30 last
evening when a raft swept into view. It must have been the floor of a
dismantled house. Upon it were grouped two women and a man. They were
evidently his mother and sister, for both clung to him as though
stupefied with fear as they were whirled under the bridge here. The man
could save himself if he had wished by simply reaching up his hand and
catching the timber of the structure. He apparently saw this himself,
and the temptation must have been strong for him to do so, but in one
second more he was seen to resolutely shake his head and clasp the women
tighter around the waist.

"On they sped. Ropes were thrown out from the tree tops, but they were
unable to c