DEATH HYMN ON ICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2581, 17 May 1923, Page 4

DEATH HYMN ON ICE.

OVERTAKEN BY FLOOD. BROTHERS’ TERRIBLg FATE WATCHERS UNABLE TO HELP. Out of the darkness, made deeper by falling snow, that enshrowded the Missouri River in flood, came the voice of two men —brothers. Clasped in each other’s arms, they sang “Nearer My God to Thee” as they drifted to their death on an icefloe. In the glare of the huge bonfires that lined the banks for half a mile, crowds of kneeling people strained their eyes in vain efforts to peer beyond the lurid circles of lighL thrown by the flares. Some prayed. Some moaned. Some joined in the hymn. Others ran helplessly along the banks in the direction of the voices in the dark, which were receding and becoming fainter and fainter as the precarious raft was borne swiftly away on the rushing flood. Harvey and Thomas Mclntosh, the brothers, were not seen again. They had been marooned on a sandbar 30 miles north of the city of Omaha, Nebraska. So intent were they on duckhunting that they had not noticed until too late that the rising river had carried their boat away.

Their cries for help were heard and- the people of the countryside began to gather on the banks, but they could not help the doomed men. An ice jam had broken somewhere up the river, and the waters suddenly released came down with a rush, churning huge ice lloes along the banks and round the sandbar. For hours the brothers perched on the stump of a tree as the bar

became covered but the river rose ever higher and higher. They were up to their waists when darkness came on and snow began to fall. Finally they were shut out from the sight of the agonised watchers, who had begun to build the bonfires. Out of the murk came a final appeal: “Can nothing be done to help us? The water is nearly up to our necks. We are paralysed with cold and cannot last much longer.” Almost immediately after the men shouted: “We have caught an icefloe and are lying on it.” Then was heard their hymn death.