We were greatly puzzled at the time over this striking exception to the Japanese political programme of concentrating streams of immigrants on our Pacific coasts. Without a word of warning a thousand Japanese coolies were shipped to Brazil, where they accepted starvation wages greatly to the disgust and indignation of the German and Italian workmen--not to speak of the lazy Brazilians themselves. This isolated advance of the Japs into Brazil struck observers as a dissipation of energy, but the Government in Tokio continued to carry out its plans, undisturbed by our expressions of astonishment. Silently, but no less surely, the diligent hands of the coolies and the industrious spirit of Japanese merchants in Brazil created funds with which the two warships were paid at least in part. The public interpreted it as an act of commendable patriotism when, in June, the one thousand four hundred Japs turned their backs on their new home, in order to defend their country's flag. They left Rio in six transport-steamers. Brazil thereupon sold her two battleships to a Greek inn-keeper at Santos, named Petrokakos, and he turned them over to the merchant Pietro Alvares Cortes di Mendoza at Bahia. This noble Don was on board one of the transport-steamers with the Japanese "volunteers," and on board this Glasgow steamer, the _Kirkwall_, the bill of sale was signed on July 14th, by the terms of which the "armed steamers" _Kure_ and _Sasebo_ passed into the possession of Japan. The Brazilian crews and some English engineers went on board the transports and were landed quietly two weeks later at various Brazilian ports. These one thousand four hundred Japanese plantation-laborers, traders, artisans, and engineers--in reality they were trained men belonging to the naval reserve--at once took over the management of the two mighty ships, and set out immediately in the direction of the West Indies. At Kingston (Jamaica) a friendly steamer supplied them with the latest news of the departure of the American transports from Cuba, and the latter met their fate, as we saw, in the roads of Corpus Christi. A terrible panic seized all our cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, as the Japanese monsters were heard from, now here, now there. For example, several shells exploded suddenly in the middle of the night in the harbor of Galveston when not a warship had been observed in the neighborhood, and again several American merchant-vessels were sent to the bottom by the mysterious ships, which began constantly to assume more gigantic proportions in the reports of the sailors. At last a squadron was dispatched from Newport News to seek and destroy the enemy, whereupon the phantom-ships disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Not until Admiral Dayton ferreted out the Japanese cruisers at the Falkland Islands did our sailors again set eyes on the two battleships. _Chapter XVIII_ THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS