[Illustration: DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE, JOHNSTOWN.]
had passed without a wink of sleep or a morsel of food, while their wounds and bruises were such as for a time to render doubtful their recovery.
Mr. Calliver, a machinist, had his dwelling in one of the upper wards of the city. His wife, an invalid, had not walked for seven years. He was watching the flood, and telling his neighbors that the worst was already past, when, looking up the river, he saw houses bounding from their places and skurrying towards him. He shouted to his family at once to flee to the attic, but, before they could reach it they were knee-deep in water. The house was floated, and borne swiftly away, but fortunately did not turn over. It drifted out of the main current, struck upon something, and was held fast, while other buildings were drifted onward. Union street school house was near, and to this place, late in the afternoon, by clambering over the accumulated drift, it became possible to escape. Here they found themselves in the company of nearly two hundred others rescued in various ways. Some were crippled, some were shivering with cold, and all had lost their nearest and dearest friends. Many were in awful suspense concerning the fate of loved ones. A sleepless, endless night dragged its slow hours along, and when at last Mr. Calliver, watching anxiously from the roof, saw the first gleam in the east, he cried out in an ecstasy, “It is morning! it is morning!” After deliverance came, being curious to know what it was that had so opportunely arrested his floating house, he made examination, and found that, of several open cars that had drifted into the neighborhood, one had dropped endwise into a cellar, and his house driven upon the end that was elevated had been penetrated with the shaft of the brake-wheel, and securely held in that place.
Rev. David J. Beale, D.D., pastor of the Presbyterian church, to whose authentic and thrillingly interesting book “Through the Johnstown Flood,” we are principally indebted for our statement of facts, and to which the reader is referred for a fuller account, records an experience, which, like those already narrated, serves to show that the visitation was as sudden as it was awful. His first intimation of the coming ruin was a roar, increasing like that of an approaching train, and a moment later the torrent had struck his residence. Urging in advance of him his family and two neighbors who were present, he rushed up stairs, and reaching the second floor found himself already waist-deep in water. At that instant, a man was shot by the force of the current through the window, and to the sudden interrogatories, “Who are you? Where did you come from?” breathless and strangling, he could only answer, “Woodvale.” He had been carried on a floating roof a mile and a quarter, and as it violently struck the parsonage, he was pitched from his hold and dashed through the window. In another minute the whole company were in the third story, witnesses, blanched and mute, of the awful scene of destruction and death.