Читать книгу The Invasion of America - J. W. Muller - Страница 7

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Never, even in after years, was it determined whence the news of the enemy ships came first. Almost as easily might a land invaded by locusts have decided what eye first saw the coming cloud, or at what precise spot.

“Warship on horizon. Standing in. Slowly.” It came from the keeper of Peaked Hill Bar Life-Saving Station at the far end of Cape Cod’s sweeping sand-arm. From the crest of the Navesink Highlands, standing steep out of the Atlantic at New York’s harbor entrance, men saw ships. On the high place their eyes commanded a view eighteen miles out to sea. At that extreme distance were the tops of fighting craft, lying safely outside of the zone of fire from the big guns in Sandy Hook’s harbor-defenses.

From his lantern 163 feet high the lighthouse keeper of Barnegat on the New Jersey coast, forty miles south of the Navesink, saw tops above his horizon. “Ships standing off here,” came the word from Cape Ann, north of Boston.

Philadelphia heard from Absecon Light and cried to Washington that the enemy was preparing to land on its coast. Boston cried to Washington for ships and men. New York telegraphed and telegraphed again and sent delegations on a special train.

Washington faced the clamor, the appeals half-beseeching and half-furious, with a great stern aspect, new in a Republic wherein the rulers are the servants who must heed public demands. This coming invasion was unprovoked. The Administration needed no party behind it now; for it knew that this was to be a fight for life, and that only the sword could decide. And it had given the sword to the army and navy without conditions.

“It is the least we can do,” the President had said. “Long ago they warned the Nation. The Nation would not give them the tools they needed. Now that there is nothing left except to do their best, they shall be left to do it in their own way.”

So the word went abroad among the politicians: “The army and navy have the bit in their teeth.” And the politicians, once so powerful, went helplessly to the Departments, to ask what they might tell their people.

“Tell them,” said the Admiral, “that there is nothing to say—yet. Here! We are sending out a bulletin.” He passed it over.

The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ

“The enemy fleet,” said the bulletin, “has expanded its line enormously to threaten many far separated points simultaneously, and thus mask its actual design for landing. Our ships and air scouts, and the army air scouts, are trying to penetrate the screen of cruisers, destroyers and enemy air-craft to find the real fleet with the convoys.”

“But is this not a chance for the navy to attack the scattered enemy ships?” asked one.

“Opportunities may occur,” answered the Admiral. “But the business of our fleet is to keep itself in battle formation.”[12]

The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held their breath. Through their streets thundered their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges were closed—had closed half an hour after opening, in panic. Even in that short time, a thousand fortunes had been destroyed: and men passing outside had heard from within a vast noise of cries and shrieks as of animals.

The banks were closing. The streets leading to the railroad stations from the financial centers were clogged by slowly moving but madly crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. Everything on wheels had been pressed into service. On one open truck, guarded by half a dozen men who showed automatic pistols ostentatiously, were bags of gold. The United States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. Men tore at securities in their safe-deposit vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. The treasure of the cities was being sent inland.

In front of the newspaper offices stood the citizens. They stood so closely crowded that there was no passage through those parts of the towns. Their throngs were so great that from their outskirts only those could read the announcements who were armed with field glasses. These fortunate ones told the news as it appeared: and it was repeated to the crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads from house-edge to edge.

All these great crowds were utterly silent. There was no sound from them, except for the voices of those who passed the news on. A man looking from a high window in a newspaper office suddenly stepped back, with a choking in his throat. “It is—it is,” he said, and choked again, “as if they were waiting for the end of the world.”

A Strategical Shelling of the Coast

Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Lighthouses, coast-guards, patrols, harbor defenses, ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly through the land.

Nantucket had seen ships. There were ships moving toward the Long Island coast as if to threaten New York. Atlantic City on the southern New Jersey coast, and Rockport in New England sent out warning.

It was a still, warm morning, heavy with the soft, humid air that early spring lays on the cities of the sea. There was no breeze, except for a languorous breathing from the distant