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
ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely moved the air. Suddenly that brooding, heavy air was shaken. One! Two! Three!
Afterward, when men compared the time, they knew that it was heard at the same instant at New York and Boston, and all the stretches of coast between them and beyond. Even in that moment of fear, there were thousands who instinctively looked at their watches and timed it. It was exactly half-past ten when the first shot sounded. Very regularly, almost somnolently, came the far-off shocks through the air. There were half-minute intervals between them, quite exact.
The last boom was heard at eleven. Long before that the bulletins had begun to tell that ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach near Boston was being shelled. Long Branch and Asbury Park were bombarded. Amagansett on Long Island was in flames.
“It has stopped,” said the bulletins, then, “The ships have ceased firing.”
Then there came news from the harbor defenses. Two ships, said Plum Island at the east end of Long Island Sound, had engaged the defenses at long range without effect. A ship had come in east of Coney Island, just outside of the zone of fire from Sandy Hook, reported Fort Hamilton, and dropped shells into Brooklyn’s suburbs.
Now the crowds were silent no longer. Long years afterward, old men told how on that still April morning they were in quiet places on the outskirts of the great cities, and heard from there a great, strange sound as of a vast æolian harp. It was the noise of multitudes, risen.