“Warship on horizon. Standing in. Slowly.” It came from the keeper of Peaked Hill Bar Life-Saving Station at the far end of Cape Cod’s sweeping sand-arm. From the crest of the Navesink Highlands, standing steep out of the Atlantic at New York’s harbor entrance, men saw ships. On the high place their eyes commanded a view eighteen miles out to sea. At that extreme distance were the tops of fighting craft, lying safely outside of the zone of fire from the big guns in Sandy Hook’s harbor-defenses. From his lantern 163 feet high the lighthouse keeper of Barnegat on the New Jersey coast, forty miles south of the Navesink, saw tops above his horizon. “Ships standing off here,” came the word from Cape Ann, north of Boston. Philadelphia heard from Absecon Light and cried to Washington that the enemy was preparing to land on its coast. Boston cried to Washington for ships and men. New York telegraphed and telegraphed again and sent delegations on a special train. Washington faced the clamor, the appeals half-beseeching and half-furious, with a great stern aspect, new in a Republic wherein the rulers are the servants who must heed public demands. This coming invasion was unprovoked. The Administration needed no party behind it now; for it knew that this was to be a fight for life, and that only the sword could decide. And it had given the sword to the army and navy without conditions. “It is the least we can do,” the President had said. “Long ago they warned the Nation. The Nation would not give them the tools they needed. Now that there is nothing left except to do their best, they shall be left to do it in their own way.” So the word went abroad among the politicians: “The army and navy have the bit in their teeth.” And the politicians, once so powerful, went helplessly to the Departments, to ask what they might tell their people. “Tell them,” said the Admiral, “that there is nothing to say--yet. Here! We are sending out a bulletin.” He passed it over. _The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ_ “The enemy fleet,” said the bulletin, “has expanded its line enormously to threaten many far separated points simultaneously, and thus mask its actual design for landing. Our ships and air scouts, and the army air scouts, are trying to penetrate the screen of cruisers, destroyers and enemy air-craft to find the real fleet with the convoys.” “But is this not a chance for the navy to attack the scattered enemy ships?” asked one. “Opportunities may occur,” answered the Admiral. “But the business of our fleet is to keep itself in battle formation.”[12] The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held their breath. Through their streets thundered their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges were closed--had closed half an hour after opening, in panic. Even in that short time, a thousand fortunes had been destroyed: and men passing outside had heard from within a vast noise of cries and shrieks as of animals.