Isaac's Storm (26 page)

Stockman
typed
his
last
paragraph,
and
his
closing
—
"Very
respectfully,"
—
and
pulled
the
page
from
the
typewriter.

His
shirt
cuffs
were
moist.
He
aligned
the
pages
of
his
letter
in
a
satisfying
stack.
Seventeen
pages.
Eighteen,
once
he
attached
a
chart
of
rain-fall
and
wind.
He
tapped
the
bottom
of
the
stack
against
the
green
felt
blotter
on
his
desk.
Dunwoody
wanted
a
defense.
This
was
a
defense.

There
was
nothing
like
a
nice
thick
letter
to
make
a
man
feel
he
had
put
in
a
good
day's
work.
Out
of
prudence
and
pride,
Stockman
began
rereading
his
own
letter.

"Colonel:"
it
began.

Now,
was
that
respectful
enough?
Should
Stockman
have
written,
"My
dear
Colonel,"
or
the
more
formal
"Sir,"
required
in
all
correspondence
with
His
Highness,
Willis
Moore?

No,
he
decided.
"Colonel"
was
fine.
A
jot
more
familiar
than
"Sir,"
perhaps,
but
after
all,
he
and
Dunwoody
were
allies.
Partners.
Almost
friends.
Dunwoody
had
begun
his
letter
"My
dear
Stockman."

Examples
of
Cuban
errors
comprised
the
bulk
of
the
letter.
The
Cubans
loved
to
dash
off
alarming
forecasts.
It
seemed
to
Stockman
that
a
big
part
of
his
job
was
simply
to
counter
the
panic
their
forecasts
produced.

Stockman
devoted
half
his
letter
to
the
storm
that
had
come
through
Cuba
earlier
that
week.
A
perfect
example.

Nothing
much
had
come
of
the
storm,
yet
the
Cubans
had
called
the
storm
a
cyclone
ever
since
die
first
sighting
in
the
final
days
of
August.
On
Wednesday,
September
5,Jover
had
actually
called
it
a
hurricane.

Jover's
forecast
had
moved
Stockman
to
add
a
few
reassuring
words
to
his
own
advisory:
"No
dangerous
winds
are
indicated."

Any
comparison
of
U.S.
and
Cuban
forecasts
regarding
this
latest
storm,
Stockman
assured
Dunwoody,
"will
show
that
the
forecasts
of
this
Bureau
were
verified
in
every
particular;
and
that
the
conditions
which
obtained
did
not
warrant
the
issuance
of
a
forecast
likely
to
cause
any
alarms
whatsoever."

All
in
all,
Stockman
felt,
it
was
an
excellent
letter:
muscular,
understated,
full
of
detail.
Eighteen
pages,
yes,
but
every
word
in
those
eighteen
pages
had
value.
Stockman
sealed
the
letter.

It
was
Friday,
September
7,
and
from
the
look
of
the
latest
observations
telegraphed
from
St.
Kitts,
Barbados,
and
the
other
West
Indies
stations,
the
weekend
would
be
a
peaceful
one.
The
entire
season
had
been
peaceful.
No
hurricanes
at
all,
other
than
the
imaginary
ones
concocted
by
Jover
and
Gangoite.
Any
rational
man
could
see
the
need
for
limiting
the
telegraphic
flow
of
their
reports.

These
people
—
they
saw
hurricanes
in
their
sleep.

FATHER
GANGOITE
REMAINED
troubled
by
atmospheric
signs
that
suggested
the
storm,
while
no
longer
a
threat
to
Cuba,
had
undergone
a
dramatic
transformation.

He
saw
a
large
and
persistent
halo
around
the
moon,
which
indicated
the
presence
of
the
high,
thin
clouds
first
identified
by
Father
Vines
as
signs
of
a
hurricane.
Gangoite
was
up
at
dawn
the
next
day,
composing
a
dispatch
for
La
Lucha.
He
would
have
to
deliver
it
by
hand.

"At
day-break,"
he
wrote,
"the
sky
was
an
intense
red,
cirrus
clouds
were
moving
from
the
W
by
N
and
NW
by
N,
with
a
focus
at
these
same
points;
these
are
clear
indications
that
the
storm
had
much
more
intensity
and
was
better
defined
than
when
it
crossed
this
island.
It
is,
we
think,
central
in
Texas,
probably
at
the
WSW
of
San
Antonio
and
northward
of
the
city
of
Porfirio
Diaz."

He
could
not
resist
tweaking
the
Americans
and
their
mistaken
belief
that
the
storm
would
cross
to
the
Atlantic,
as
if
storms
could
behave
one
way,
and
one
way
only.

"Now
some
articles
have
been
written
saying
that
the
disturbance
from
the
SE
had
moved
by
the
first
quadrant
out
over
the
Atlantic;
we
think
however
that
we
still
have
it
in
sight
as
it
passes
through
the
Gulf,
and
that
it
is
at
present
in
the
4th
quadrant,
between
Abilene
and
Palestine.

"Who
is
right?"

O
BSERVATION
 

Saturday,
September
8:
Buford
T.
Morris,
a
real-estate
agent
who
lived
in
Houston
but
spent
weekends
in
Galveston
at
his
house
a
few
blocks
from
the
wharf,
happened
to
look
out
his
bedroom
window
at
first
light.
 

"The
sky
seemed
to
be
made
of
mother
of
pearl;
gloriously
pink,
yet
containing
a
fish-scale
effect
which
reflected
all
the
colors
of
the
rainbow.
Never
had
I
seen
such
a
beautiful
sky."
 

EARLY
SATURDAY
MORNING
the
Pensacola
swung
from
her
anchor
in
seas
turned
luminous
by
lightning
and
exploding
rain.
Each
great
swell
seemed
to
bring
the
ship
closer
and
closer
to
disintegration.
Captain
Simmons
and
his
two
guests,
Menard
and
Carroll,
held
tight
to
rails
and
bulkheads,
trying
hard
in
the
manner
of
the
age
not
to
show
their
fear.
All
night
the
ship's
steel
beams
howled
like
wolves.
Wind
keened
among
the
deck
rails
and
boom
wires.
To
the
first
officer,
it
seemed
as
if
the
ship
were
caught
at
the
convergence
of
two
storms,
a
gale
from
the
north
and
a
hurricane
from
the
east,
that
together
produced
a
tornado.
Menard
agreed.
Only
a
confluence
of
storms,
he
believed,
could
produce
such
intensity.

Dawn
brought
little
relief.
Green
swells
walled
the
ship.
At
intervals
visibility
fell
to
zero.
It
was
impossible
to
open
one's
eyes
against
the
horizontal
rain.

At
10:30
that
morning,
the
anchor
fractured.
The
ship's
bow
pivoted
from
the
oncoming
seas
like
a
horse
pulled
into
a
sudden
turn.

Captain
Simmons
ordered
his
crew
to
play
out
two
hundred
fathoms
of
nine-inch
hawser
from
the
stern,
which
together
with
the
chain-cable
still
trailing
from
the
bow
had
the
effect
of
slowing
the
ship's
landward
drift
and
stabilizing
its
motion.
The
thumping
stopped,
but
the
ship
now
rode
parallel
to
the
oncoming
crests
and
slid
deep
into
the
troughs
between
waves,
a
deadly
place.

Simmons
ordered
a
sounding
and
found
the
ship
was
in
twenty
fathoms
of
water,
or
120
feet.
He
estimated
its
position
at
about
115
miles
southeast
of
Galveston.
The
storm
seemed
to
be
shoving
the
Pensacola
direcdy
toward
the
city.

If
Simmons
was
right,
then
Galveston
lay
direcdy
in
the
great
storm's
path.
It
would
arrive,
he
knew,
without
warning,
and
there
was
nothing
he
could
do
to
sound
the
alarm.

AT
DAWN
SATURDAY
two
men
stood
on
the
beach,
apparently
out
of
sight
of
each
other.
One
was
Isaac
Cline,
who
stood
with
his
watch
cupped
in
his
palm,
glancing
from
its
face
to
the
sea
and
back
again.
The
other
was
his
neighbor,
Dr.
Young.
Both
men
had
come
to
the
beach
for
essentially
the
same
reason.

Dr.
Young
watched
the
waves
attack
the
streetcar
trestle,
which
through
an
act
of
supreme
confidence
had
been
built
over
the
Gulf
itself.
Waves
now
crashed
over
the
rails
and
exploded
against
the
pilings
in
vertical
geysers
of
arctic-white
spray.

Dr.
Young
stayed
only
a
few
moments.
The
sight
was
all
the
confirmation
he
needed.
"I
was
certain
then
we
were
going
to
have
a
cyclone."
He
walked
into
the
city,
and
went
directly
to
the
Western
Union
office
on
the
Strand,
where
he
composed
a
telegram
addressed
to
his
wife,
still
aboard
that
Southern
Pacific
train
from
the
west.

It
was
a
measure
of
the
age
that
Dr.
Young
had
such
complete
faith
in
Western
Union's
ability
to
find
his
wife
during
the
train's
brief
stop
in
San
Antonio.

He
asked
her
to
wait
in
San
Antonio
until
he
sent
word
for
her
to
continue
to
Galveston.
"I
told
her
that
a
great
storm
was
on
us."

Legend
holds
that
the
sea
convinced
Isaac
of
the
same
thing
—
that
he
raced
back
to
the
office,
galvanized
the
station
into
a
flurry
of
action,
then
sped
back
to
the
beach
and
warned
everyone
he
saw
to
flee
the
city
or
retreat
to
the
center
of
town.
Later
Isaac
took
personal
credit
for
inciting
six
thousand
people
to
leave
the
beach
and
its
adjacent
neighborhoods.
If
not
for
him,
he
claimed
later,
the
death
toll
would
have
been
far
higher.
Perhaps
even
double.

But
Isaac's
response,
and
that
of
his
station,
was
in
reality
more
ambivalent.
A
few
hours
after
Isaac's
trip
to
the
beach,
the
Alamo's
Captain
Hix
made
his
visit
to
the
station
—
the
visit
in
which
he
was
told
the
coming
storm
was
an
innocuous
"offspur"
of
one
that
had
struck
Florida.
At
about
nine
o'clock
that
morning,
Theodore
C.
Bornkessell,
Isaac's
printer,
left
work
to
go
to
his
cottage
in
the
city's
west
end
and
passed
the
home
of
an
acquaintance
named
E.
F.
Gerloff,
who
asked
about
the
storm.
Bornkessell
replied
there
was
nothing
to
worry
about.