A figure approached the Hopkins home, moving against the current. The water was up to his underarms. He dodged pieces of lumber and boxes and telegraph poles. Now and then a square of slate smacked the water around him. Softer things bumped against his legs, then moved on with the current. When Mason arrived, a lightness came over the Hopkins household. It was as if the house itself had been holding its breath awaiting his arrival. He was bruised and soaked, but smiling, and Mrs. Hopkins hugged him as if she had never hugged anyone before. The storm raged and water burbled up through the holes in the floor and slid in a sheet under the front door, but everyone was home and the unspoken fear that had gripped the place was suddenly gone. “We had a warm feeling of all of us being together, safely, we b\elieved. We went upstairs in the main part of our house . . . to wait out the storm.”

All over Galveston, there was a need for light. A craving. People needed light for themselves to ease their fears, but they also needed
-183-
others to know they were still in their homes and alive. Throughout Galveston, lamps bloomed in a thousand second-floor windows. We’re here, they said. Come for us. Please.
The same idea came to Louise’s mother. She did not want to use a lamp, however. The house was shaking too badly. She feared the lamp would fall and set fire to the house, and then all would indeed be lost.
She dragged one of the big drums of lard to the center of the room. She found a carnival flag attached to a stick, and laid the stick across the top of the drum. She saturated a strip of cloth with lard, then draped this over the stick, one end in the lard, for a wick. “When it was lighted it gave off a dim and eerie light, “Louise said. “We sat and watched it flickering and listened to the banging and howling of the storm outside.”
It was oddly comfortable in the room. Almost cozy.
Until her sister, Lois, screamed.
-184-