More than a hundred miles of sea, said the news, were covered by the advancing fleet. It was a hundred miles of steel forts; and outside of them, dashing back and forth in ceaseless patrol, were the lighter and faster craft, consisting of destroyers and small, swift cruisers. The scout cruiser _Birmingham_ had spied ships inside even the inner line. But they were not transports. They were still warships. The troop transports were so far within all the protective cordons that the American scouts, lying far along the horizon, could not even sight their masts. The enemy fleet scarcely made an attempt to attack the spying vessels. It seemed almost that the enormous mass was too insolently sure of its power to trouble about the scouts. So, with watching cruisers and destroyers hanging to its sides day and night, the invaders’ armada moved westward as steady as a lifeless, wicked machine. Never varying their distances or relative positions, never falling out of line, never altering their speed of 14 knots, the dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers guarded their precious transports, trusting to their outer cordon to keep off all attacks. And the outer cordon held true. It did not move slowly, majestically, like the armored line. Incessantly it swept back and forth, and in and out, patrolling the sea to a distance so far from the battle-ships that the American scouts rarely could approach nearer than to sight, from their own tops, the tops of the dreadnaughts. _The Message From the Kearsarge_ As the enemy covered the sea, so he filled the air. Constantly, all day long, floating and drifting with the soft white clouds far beyond the farthest extent of the cordon, his aeroplanes surveyed the water-world. And all day long, and all night long, the ships’ wireless tore the air. The American wireless, too, played forth its electric waves of air night and day. From daring scouts to relay-ships, and from relay-ships to hidden fleet and to waiting Nation, went the story out of the far sea. The American millions knew the progress of the coming enemy as if the fleet were an army moving along a populous highway of the land. The Nation watched the implacable, remorseless advance breathlessly, apprehensively; but behind its apprehension there was hope. “Surely, surely,” men said to each other, “our splendid sailors will get at them!” Accustomed by its history to expect thrilling deeds of dash and enterprise that should wrest success out of disaster, the United States waited for The Deed. It came. Out of the far Atlantic came the story. It came from the battle-ship _Kearsarge_ and went to the _Chester_, it was passed on by the _Chester_ and picked up by the _Tacoma_, and the _Tacoma_ tossed it into the air and sent it to the coast.