The Enemy Moves
Suddenly, almost simultaneously, the American patrols were driven back all along the line. On a front that extended quickly, irresistibly, clear across Washington County, Rhode Island, from east to west, the invader army expanded. It seized Watch Hill. Kingston was occupied in force. Wickford Junction was occupied. Narragansett Pier was flooded, all at once, with men and guns.
With the swiftness of a blow from a fighter’s fist, the invader had struck and won the entire railroad system of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in Rhode Island, and commanded the way to Providence.
The foe had filled his divisions. Forty thousand men were ready for battle on American soil, with ten thousand in reserve on the coast.
Now the wind turned south-east. Point Judith, Rhode Island’s cape that coast-wise mariners call The Fog-Hole, began to brew one of its April fogs, gray and blind and wet.
Its first effect was kind to the Americans. The enemy air-craft, seeing the vapory bank growing from the sea, fled toward their lines. From all directions they came in, like gulls fleeing before a storm. They could not dare to remain in strange territory. All their fine maps, all their ingenious instruments, would be impotent against it. They came in, and alighted behind their army.
Freed from them, and masked by the fog, the American scouts went forward again and groped once more along the foe’s front. In an
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE LANDING OF THE ENEMY FORCES
