Isaac's Storm (25 page)

"Well,
young
man,"
Hix
snorted.
"It's
going
to
be
the
damnedest
offspur
you
ever
saw."

Young
man.

Not
Isaac,
surely.
He
was
thirty-eight
years
old,
which
in
1900
qualified
him
as
middle-aged.
More
likely
the
observer
was
Joseph
Cline
or
the
newly
arrived
John
Blagden.

Regardless,
it
was
a
telling
encounter.
It
suggests
that
Isaac
had
not
told
his
fellow
observers
about
his
predawn
trip
to
the
beach,
or
at
least
had
not
revealed
to
them
the
depth
of
his
concern.
Or
else
he
simply
was
not
as
worried
as
he
later
claimed.

Hix,
however,
hurried
back
to
the
wharf
and
readied
the
Alamo
for
storm.

BY
FRIDAY
AFTERNOON,
a
few
sea
captains
and
their
crews
were
still
the
only
men
who
knew
the
storm's
true
secret
—
that
it
had
grown
into
a
monster.
Some
lived;
some
did
not.
In
Tampa
earlier,
storm
flags
went
up,
but
the
schooner
Olive
set
sail
anyway
for
Biloxi,
Mississippi.
Now,
she
was
missing.
Two
ships
ran
aground
off
Florida,
their
crews
feared
lost.
The
storm
caught
other
ships
as
well
—
the
El
Dorado
out
of
New
Orleans,
and
the
Concho
and
Hyades,
both
out
of
Galveston.
Captain
Halsey
struggled
to
keep
the
Louisiana
upright
in
waves
whose
backs
were
planed
almost
smooth
by
the
intense
wind.

By
noon,
the
Pensacola
was
well
into
the
Gulf.
Captain
Simmons
checked
his
barometer
and
saw
the
mercury
at
29.9.
Over
the
next
two
hours,
pressure
fell
nearly
an
inch.
The
wind
reached
gale
force.

Captain
Simmons
stayed
on
course,
the
ship's
bow
aimed
roughly
toward
the
Mississippi
Delta,
where
the
state
of
Louisiana
bulged
into
the
Gulf.

Why
he
did
not
run
can
never
be
known,
but
it
is
likely
his
failure
to
do
so
was
the
product
of
those
eight
hundred
previous
voyages,
his
own
ornery
temperament,
and
the
technological
arrogance
of
the
time
—
hell,
the
Pensacola
was
made
of
steel
and
weighed
two
million
pounds.

Plus,
he
had
an
audience.
At
one
point,
in
a
show
of
bravado,
Simmons
called
his
guests
to
the
barometer.
"Menard,"
Simmons
said.
"Look
at
that
glass.
Twenty-eight
point
fifty-five.
I
have
never
seen
it
that
low.
You
never
have
and
will
in
all
probability
never
see
it
again."

Simmons
ordered
all
hatches
sealed.
The
waves
grew;
the
wind
accelerated.
Simmons
gauged
the
wind
at
one
hundred
miles
an
hour.

Foam
covered
the
sea.
Spindrift
blew
in
long
luminous
tentacles
that
seemed
to
reach
for
the
bridge.
Simmons
stopped
the
engine.
He
ordered
the
anchor
dropped,
along
with
one
hundred
fathoms
of
chain
cable,
or
six
hundred
feet.

When
the
anchor
caught,
the
ship
swung
so
mat
its
bow
faced
head-on
into
the
wind
like
a
kite
tethered
to
a
child's
wrist.
It
"labored
heavily,"
Menard
said,
"rising
off
one
tremendous
sea
and
dropping
on
another,
whichjarred
the
vessel
and
made
her
tremble
all
over."
Steel
seams
howled.
The
wild
tumbling
shattered
crockery
and
lamps.
Fragments
slid
in
noisy
herds
back
and
forth
across
the
deck.
The
captain's
dog
got
seasick.

"It
looked
as
if
the
good
ship
could
not
stand
such
a
thumping,"
Menard
recalled.
"It
was
feared
she
would
strain
her
plates
or
break
some
bolts,
if
the
vessel
did
not
break
in
two."

This
two-million-pound
steel-hulled
screw-driven
marvel
of
marine
technology
was
in
trouble
—
suddenly
no
better
off
than
a
square-rigged
barkentine.
Worse
off,
in
some
respects.
Steamships
could
not
broach-to
the
way
the
old
wooden
sailing
ships
could.
If
knocked
on
her
side,
the
Pensacola
would
have
sunk
like
a
steel
bearing.
The
pounding
was
the
biggest
worry.
A
ruptured
seam,
Menard
guessed,
would
drive
her
to
the
bottom
in
five
minutes.

Things
like
this
were
not
supposed
to
happen.
Not
anymore.

Whether
the
ship
survived
or
not
was
now
only
a
matter
of
luck.

Luck,
and
maybe
a
little
quiet
prayer.

FRIDAY
NIGHT,
DR.
Samuel
O.
Young,
the
secretary
of
the
Cotton
Exchange,
walked
from
his
house
to
the
beach.
He
lived
at
the
corner
of
P1/2
and
25th,
one
block
north
of
Isaac
Cline's
home,
in
a
large
two-story
house
mounted
on
brick
pillars
four
feet
high.
On
stormy
nights,
as
lightning
flashed,
Young
could
see
Dr.
Cline
standing
on
his
second-floor
balcony,
keeping
an
eye
on
the
weather.
Dr.
Cline,
no
doubt,
could
also
see
him.

As
Young
walked
past
the
weatherman's
house,
he
saw
children
outside,
leaping
about
unmindful
of
the
mosquitoes
beginning
to
emerge
from
the
gutters
and
the
moist
places
left
by
Tuesday's
thunderstorms.

His
own
children
and
his
wife
were
at
that
moment
in
the
sleeping
car
of
a
Southern
Pacific
train
speeding
toward
Texas
from
the
west,
where
they
had
spent
the
summer
away
from
the
heat
and
mosquitoes.

Ahead,
Murdoch's
pier
blazed
with
light.
The
crests
of
incoming
waves
seemed
nearly
to
touch
the
lamps
suspended
over
the
surf.
There
would
be
no
nude
bathing
tonight
—
unlike
other
nights,
when
as
many
as
two
hundred
men
would
gather
in
the
waves
beyond
the
reach
of
the
lamps
and
swim
frog-naked
in
the
warm
water.
The
thought
of
joining
them
had
crossed
Young's
mind
now
and
then,
but
he
quickly
put
those
inclinations
out
of
his
skull.
He
could
see
it
now:
a
two-inch
item
in
the
next
morning's
News
about
the
secretary
of
the
Cotton
Exchange
tumbling
naked
among
the
waves.

The
Gulf
had
grown
angrier
since
Wednesday,
when
Young
first
had
noticed
the
unusual
height
of
the
waves
and
the
absence
of
any
wind
to
explain
their
growth.
"Thursday
afternoon,"
he
wrote,
"the
tide
was
again
high
and
the
water
very
rough,
while
the
atmosphere
had
that
peculiar
hazy
appearance
that
generally
precedes
a
storm."
Now
it
was
Friday
night.
A
robust
wind
raced
past
Young
toward
the
Gulf,
but
did
Lite
to
dispel
the
heat.
The
surf
was
rough,
the
tide
unusually
high,
"though
as
a
rule
with
a
north
wind
the
tide
is
low
and
the
gulf
as
smooth
as
the
bay."

To
Young,
this
was
additional
evidence:
"I
was
then
confident
that
a
cyclone
was
approaching
us
and
accounted
for
the
high
tide
by
assuming
that
the
storm
was
moving
toward
the
northwest
or
against
the
gulf
stream,
thus
piling
up
the
water
in
the
gulf."

The
cyclone's
exact
location
was
anyone's
guess.
The
Weather
Bureau
was
no
help.
About
all
one
could
really
tell
from
the
bureau's
advisories
was
that
a
storm
of
some
sort
did
exist.
The
bureau
had
not
yet
acknowledged
that
the
storm
was
a
tropical
cyclone.
But
it
had
to
be,
Young
believed.

"For
my
own
satisfaction,
and
at
the
request
of
friends,
I
constructed
a
chart,
outlining
roughly
the
origin,
development
and
probable
course
of
the
cyclone."

He
based
his
estimate
of
the
storm's
track
on
what
he
had
seen
in
the
Tuesday-morning
weather
map
and
on
subsequent
maps
and
advisories
from
the
Weather
Bureau's
Central
Office,
copies
of
which
came
to
the
Cotton
Exchange
because
of
its
obvious
interest
in
weather.
He
placed
the
storm's
origin
somewhere
south
of
Cuba,
but
assumed
it
would
behave
like
most
tropical
storms
—
that
it
would
travel
northwest
for
a
time
"as
cyclones
always
do,"
then
curve
toward
the
northeast
for
an
exit
into
the
Adantic.
He
estimated
the
storm
would
strike
the
U.S.
mainland
somewhere
near
the
mouth
of
the
Mississippi.

"The
error
I
made,"
he
wrote,
"was
in
placing
the
course
too
far
to
the
east."

THAT
EVENING,
AT
precisely
6:41
P.M.
Galveston
time,Joseph
Cline
took
the
necessary
readings
for
the
eight
o'clock
75th
meridian-time
national
observation.

Much
of
the
day
had
been
clear
and
hot,
but
now
clouds
filled
the
sky
from
horizon
to
horizon.
Joseph
rated
the
cloud
cover
at
ten,
the
maximum.
It
was
still
hot,
however.
At
4:00
P.M.
the
temperature
had
been
90
degrees.
Now,
nearly
three
hours
later,
the
thermometer
still
showed
90.

The
barometer
stood
at
29.637,
and
rising.
At
midnight,
when
Joseph
climbed
to
the
Levy
Building
roof
to
take
his
last
reading,
he
found
the
barometer
had
risen
to
29.72.

IN
HAVANA,
FRIDAY
afternoon,
William
Stockman
dried
his
fingers
on
a
towel
that
he
kept
beside
his
desk.
He
wound
another
piece
of
paper
into
his
typewriter.
A
fan
dangled
from
the
high
ceiling.
The
air
was
like
a
moist
sweater.

He
typed
a
page
number
at
the
top.
Seventeen.
It
was
the
last
page
of
his
reply
to
Col.
H.
H.
C.
Dunwoody's
letter
of
Wednesday,
September
5,
in
which
Dunwoody
had
shown
himself
uncharacteristically
perturbed
by
the
Cubans
and
their
rather
pathetic
cries
of
outrage
over
the
bureau's
telegraph
ban.
Dunwoody
had
written,
"I
think
it
would
also
be
well
for
you
to
give
me
a
copy
of
the
statement
of
the
mistakes
which
Jover
made
last
year,
and
to
which
at
one
time
you
called
my
attention....
I
may
need
this
in
defending
my
position."

Stockman
believed
he
had
more
than
fulfilled
the
colonel's
request.
In
diese
seventeen
pages
he
had
given
Dunwoody
example
after
example
of
forecasts
in
which
the
Cubans
had
made
alarming
declarations
that
later
proved
baseless.
No
one
could
accuse
Stockman
of
manipulating
the
record.
Stockman
had
typed
the
Cuban
forecasts
and
the
corresponding
U.S.
advisories
verbatim,
with
dates
and
times,
so
Dunwoody
and
his
critics
could
see
for
themselves.