One of the scouts slapped his thigh. “I believe,” said he, “that they are going to show themselves to Boston and New York!”
That was at nine o’clock in the morning. At noon the crowds in the two cities were startled by a distant roar that grew, almost before they had first heard it, into a thundering that shook the air. They stared upward and beheld the first squadron of armed flying machines that America ever had seen.
IV
THE COAST DEFENSES FALL
Armored, with the bright colors of the enemy on their under-bodies, the aeroplanes from the enemy fleet flew low. What few anti-aircraft guns the United States possessed were with the army. Around the peaceful American cities were no encircling fortifications, no batteries, no military works that might conceal marksmen. The air-men knew that there was nothing to fear.
They skimmed close to the State House on Boston’s Beacon Hill. They flew over the tall municipal building of New York and dipped toward the City Hall. They appeared over Providence and Fall River, over Brockton, over Bridgeport and New Haven. They passed over every one of the factory-cities of New Jersey that crowd to be near New York’s harbor.
Where they appeared it was as if they bore some instant charm to turn the world to stone.
All the city noises stopped, dead. All motion stopped. Wheels stopped turning and feet stopped moving and every white face was turned upward. For that long moment of dumb fear, men saw nothing except the wide-winged bodies. They heard nothing except the yelping and droning of the hundred-horse-power motors over them.
Then they fled. Motor-men and drivers bent low, and yelled, and sent their vehicles ahead blindly. The crowds rushed every door-way. They fought for the protection of narrow cornices as if they were bomb-proofs. They squeezed themselves close to the sides of buildings, and clung to smooth iron and granite, and stared upward, waiting for bombs.