The banks were closing. The streets leading to the railroad stations from the financial centers were clogged by slowly moving but madly crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. Everything on wheels had been pressed into service. On one open truck, guarded by half a dozen men who showed automatic pistols ostentatiously, were bags of gold. The United States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. Men tore at securities in their safe-deposit vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. The treasure of the cities was being sent inland. In front of the newspaper offices stood the citizens. They stood so closely crowded that there was no passage through those parts of the towns. Their throngs were so great that from their outskirts only those could read the announcements who were armed with field glasses. These fortunate ones told the news as it appeared: and it was repeated to the crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads from house-edge to edge. All these great crowds were utterly silent. There was no sound from them, except for the voices of those who passed the news on. A man looking from a high window in a newspaper office suddenly stepped back, with a choking in his throat. “It is--it is,” he said, and choked again, “as if they were waiting for the end of the world.” _A Strategical Shelling of the Coast_ Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Lighthouses, coast-guards, patrols, harbor defenses, ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly through the land. Nantucket had seen ships. There were ships moving toward the Long Island coast as if to threaten New York. Atlantic City on the southern New Jersey coast, and Rockport in New England sent out warning. It was a still, warm morning, heavy with the soft, humid air that early spring lays on the cities of the sea. There was no breeze, except for a languorous breathing from the distant [Illustration: “There were ships moving toward the Long Island Coast as if to threaten New York.”] ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely moved the air. Suddenly that brooding, heavy air was shaken. One! Two! Three! Afterward, when men compared the time, they knew that it was heard at the same instant at New York and Boston, and all the stretches of coast between them and beyond. Even in that moment of fear, there were thousands who instinctively looked at their watches and timed it. It was exactly half-past ten when the first shot sounded. Very regularly, almost somnolently, came the far-off shocks through the air. There were half-minute intervals between them, quite exact. The last boom was heard at eleven. Long before that the bulletins had begun to tell that ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach near Boston was being shelled. Long Branch and Asbury Park were bombarded. Amagansett on Long Island was in flames. “It has stopped,” said the bulletins, then, “The ships have ceased firing.”