Not for a moment had the fleet fallen into disorder. Even while the destroyers were picking up what survivors they could find, another dreadnaught hoisted its commander’s flag as Admiral, in place of the one who lay under the bright green water. A speed cone went up: and warships and convoy steamed full speed ahead. Half an hour later the periscopes of two submarines, outdistanced, bobbed up far behind the fleet. Their gray shapes arose, streaming. The manholes opened and heads came out, blinking into the sunlight and drawing in great breaths of fresh air. They followed the ships toward the coast. One of them hoisted a wireless apparatus, and began to call. It was a weak call, that had to be repeated again and again. Then Montauk Point heard, over a temporary apparatus, and received, and began to send on to New York; and the bulletins told that submarine M-9 had sunk the Admiral’s flag-ship, that submarine G-3 had sunk a destroyer, and that submarine O-1 had been lost. “Victory! Victory! VICTORY!” ran the news. They knew that it was not victory, those great, anxious crowds that stopped all traffic that day in all the continent of North America. But for a while they were thrilled, and they cheered, and forgot the slow, implacable grip of irresistible power that was closing in on their eastern sea-coast, not to be stayed, not even to be halted. _The Bombardment of the Coast_ The day passed, and the dusk came in. A pleasant evening it was, warm enough to tempt people to stay out-of-doors. Even in the trembling sea-cities there was all the wonted life of such a season. The rich had fled; but the others remained. There was nothing else for them to do. A few months before, had any of them been asked what they would do in case of an invasion, they would have painted a picture of the millions fleeing from their cities with what possessions they could lug. Thus it had been in Europe, as they had read. Thus it would be in America. But it was not so. There they were, watching and waiting, and clinging to the only hold they knew. And in this soft dusk, there they loitered in their countless miles of streets, and talked, and argued, and prophesied, just as they had done always. And everywhere in the miles fronted by little houses and tenements and tall apartments the children were ushering in the spring by playing ring-around-rosy. Everywhere their thin, clear young voices made the old accustomed music of the towns. EXTRA! EXTRA! In the soft dusk, on the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coast there was falling red Hell and ruin.