Banzai! by Parabellum

by Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

"Hand that thing over here," said the Jap; "you might take it into your head to use it," and he took Johnny's revolver and put it in his pocket. Several Japanese soldiers passed by outside. Mr. Allen sank down on a chair; not one of them could make head or tail of the situation.

They were kept waiting for half an hour. Down below in the street, where the wagons were beginning to rattle over the pavement, could be heard the steady march of bodies of soldiers, frequently interrupted by the noise of motor-cycles. There could no longer be any doubt—the affair was getting serious.

The lamps were extinguished and the gray light of dawn filled the rooms as the head Postmaster made his rounds, guarded by a Japanese officer.

The official was perspiring profusely from sheer nervousness. He begged the employees to keep calm, and assured them that it was no joke, but that San Francisco was really in the hands of the Japanese. It was the duty of the employees and the citizens, he said, to refrain from all resistance, so that a worse misfortune—a bombardment, he added in a whisper—might not befall the city.

The men were obliged to give up any weapons they had in their possession, and these were collected by the Japanese. At seven o'clock, when these details had been attended to, and the few telegraph instruments which were kept in commission were being used by Japanese operators—all the others had been rendered useless by the removal of some parts of the mechanism—one of the regular operators asked to be allowed to speak to the Postmaster. Permission having been granted by the Japanese guard, he told his chief, in a low voice, that the moment the Japanese soldiers had taken possession of the telegraph room he had hurriedly dispatched a message to Sacramento, telling them that San Francisco had been surprised by the Japanese fleet and that the whole city was occupied by Japanese troops.

"I thank you in the name of our poor country," said the Postmaster, shaking the operator's hand, "I thank you with all my heart; you have done a brave deed."

Just at the time when the operator sent off his telegram to Sacramento, a little, yellow, narrow-eyed fellow, lying in a ditch many miles inland, far to the east of San Francisco, connected his Morse apparatus with the San Francisco-Sacramento telegraph-wire, and intercepted the following message: "Chief of Police, Sacramento.—San Francisco attacked by Japanese fleet this morning; whole city in hands of Japanese army. Resistance impossible, as attack took place in thick fog before dawn. Help imperative."

The little yellow man smiled contentedly, tore off the strip, and handed it to the officer standing near him. The latter drew a deep breath and said: "Thank Heaven, that's settled."

At the time of the occupation of the Post Office building, the Japanese outposts had already spun their fine, almost invisible silver threads around all the telegraph-wires far inland and thus cut off all telegraphic communication with the east. The telegram just quoted therefore served only to tell the Japanese outposts of the overwhelming success of the Japanese arms at the Golden Gate.

But how had all this been accomplished? The enemy could not possibly have depended on the fog from the outset. Nevertheless an unusual barometrical depression had brought in its train several days of disagreeable, stormy weather. The Japanese had been fully prepared for a battle with the San Francisco forts and with the few warships stationed in the harbor. The fact that they found such a strong ally in the fog was beyond all their hopes and strategical calculations.