"Well, what next?" asked Gloria, who seemed to have preserved more of her normal cheerfulness than anyone. "Do we stay here till they come for us, or do we go get 'em?"
"We get out," said Ben Ruby. "No good here. They know too much for us."
"Right," declared Beeville. "The usual methods of dealing with animals won't work this time. They are all based on the fact that animals are creatures of habit instead of intelligence, and unless I am much wrong, these birds are intelligent and have some bigger intelligence backing them."
"You mean they'll try to bomb us out of here?" asked Roberts.
McAllister looked up from the dice he was throwing. "You bet your sweet life they will. Those babies know their stuff. The one that was after me was onto the manual of the bayonet like he'd been raised on it."
"That's nice," said Gloria, "but what are we going to do about it?"
"Get an anti-aircraft gun from the Island and shell hell out of them when they come round again," suggested the artilleryman.
"Said gun would be considerable weight for individual to transport in pocket," said Yoshio doubtfully, as Ben raised his hand for silence amid the ensuing laughter.
"There's a good deal in that idea," he said, "but I don't think it will do as it stands. The birds would bomb our gun to blazes after they had a dose or two from it. They're not so slow themselves you know. How about some of the forts? Aren't there some big ones around New York?"
McAllister nodded. "There's Hancock. We could get a ship through."