Sunday had thin sun and a light wind, but by ten that evening, the barometer commenced to fall too fast, with gusts to thirty, forty, fifty miles, and rising. By noon next day she’d shifted, coming out of the southeast, then around out of the south. That afternoon of Monday, October 17th, is when the sky turned black and the storm blew hardest, rolling all the way across the Gulf from the Yucatan Channel.
That’s when the walls budged. Our thatch roof shifted, even lifted once as the wind moaned, trying to pry the lid. At high tide, the seas washed over the shell ridge into the cabins. We floated the skiff right to the door and threw some stuff in. Something banged and something tore and the roof was gone and the storm exploded amongst the walls and the door frame was suddenly empty. Rain slashed straight across in sheets, whipping our faces. The sky caved in and the Gulf of Mexico crashed on our coast, so wild and heavy that the waves was lost, there was only roil and thunder. We took to the boats before they disappeared, they was jumping on their moorings like wild horses.
Wood Key was flooded over when we chopped the lines, let the storm carry the boats away inland. Where they finally snagged, we lashed ’em tight into the jungle trees. Hour after hour, our folks prayed to the Lord Almighty for deliverance; in the next tree, a family of possums, white faces staring out, seemed to pray, too. My Sarah cried, “Are we in Hell?” And Daddy Richard yelled into her ear, “No, girl! We are still here on God’s earth!” Ma Mary screeched, “Well, then, God’s earth is Hell enough for me!”
Them winds of the Great Hurricane of 1910 lasted thirty hours, seemed like the world was coming to an end. When the barometer blew away at Sand Key Light, down by Key West, it already registered 28.4, the lowest pressure ever recorded in the U.S.A. until that day.
When the storm eased some toward morning, a great emptiness came in behind it although there was still considerable wind. We were very thirsty but at least could catch a breath. All agreed that the Great Hurricane was foretold by that silver light across the heavens in the spring. Such a terrible storm, just seven days and seven nights after so much bloody murder, could only be sign of the Lord’s Wrath, but Mister Watson’s infant boy, drowned at Pavilion Key, was the only life He took on this whole coast.