On the second morning of their arrival, Japanese officials circling above the captured region, roughly allotted the land to Captains under whose leadership were a hundred planes each. The captains then assigned each couple places to stake their plane, which were located a hundred meters apart, allowing to each about two and a half acres of land. Professor Oshima and Komoru, as soil chemists, were constantly on the go making studies of the land and advising with the other experts as to the crops to plant, and the methods of tillage for the various locations. In the cotton lands, where Ethel and her associates were located, the soil was immediately put to a fuller use. The cotton plants were thinned and pruned and between the rows quick growing vegetables were planted. Elsewhere the great pastures were broken up with captured kerosene-driven gang plows and by dint of hard labor the sod was quickly reduced to a fit state for intensive cultivation. The outside work of the professor and his secretary threw Ethel altogether in the company of Madame Oshima. For this fact she was very grateful, as her aversion to Komoru, to whom she was nominally bound, grew more and more a source of worry and fear. So the two women of Aryan blood worked together in the cotton field side by side with the Orientals--worked and waited and wondered what was awing in the surrounding world. The gasoline wagons came around and refilled the fuel tanks of the planes. Mechanics inspected the engines carefully and replaced defective parts. The rice cakes and soyu brought from Japan, had been replaced by a diet of wheat and maize products and fresh fruits and vegetables taken from the captured stores and gardens. Such captured foods, however, had all been inspected by the dieteticians, and those of doubtful wholesomeness destroyed or placed under lock and key to be used only as a last resort. Thus weeks passed. The green things of Japanese planting had poked their tender shoots through the black American soil. There had been no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy militia or a local posse had tried to attach the Japanese outposts. American aeroplanes had wisely staid away. But the fight was yet to come. The Federal Government had recalled its ships from Panama and was bringing back the soldiers from California. On the great flat prairie between Galveston and Houston, a mighty military camp was being established. Aeroplane sheds were erected and repair shops built. Long lines of army tents were pitched in close proximity. Army canteens were established that the thirsty soldiers might get pure liquor and good tobacco and a few rods away--over the line--other grog shops were opened wherein were sold similar goods not so guaranteed. Gambling sharks arrived and set up shell games and bedraggled prostitutes--outcasts from urban centers of debauchery---came and camped nearby and made night hideous with their obscene revelry.