Out of the tranquil, empty sea it had come. Out there, far out, in the pearl and gray, there had been flashes. There had been roars and whistles and bellows in the high, still air, coming, coming! And the shells had plunged down, everywhere, unending. Streams of iron, streams of fire, streams of screaming, bursting things: things that struck the land and spun into it like beasts biting, and burst, blasting away forests and houses and men in crimson whirlwind: things that plunged into towns and ricocheted, and pulled down walls and towers: things that darted at power plants and darkened the world: and things that burst into towns with fierce fire and set the world a-light. It was not news that came through the spring night. To the men at the receiving ends of wires it was as if there were coming to them one wild din of terror. Here were telephone messages that broke off in the middle and were never to be resumed on this earth. Here were telegraph dispatches that stopped suddenly and left the wire dead, its far end dangling where a shell had torn down the poles. From hill tops far inland came raving words of burning towns glaring red in the country below. From somewhere unknown, from somebody unknown, came one word over a telephone that instantly went out of commission. It was: “God.” In the cabin of the new flag-ship sat the new Admiral. The ship was shaking with the explosions from its secondary batteries, but the cabin was orderly and sedate. A shaded light was shining on a chart. “Another hour of this,” said the Admiral, “and I think the coast will be nicely cleared for the landing.” He selected a cigar from its box, and lit it carefully. III THE LANDING The first American soil on which the invader set foot was not on the mainland. It was a steep-edged, wind-blown bit of New England territory that swims like a ship far out on the Atlantic in the great misty ocean gate between painted Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard and the brown-handed lighthouse of Montauk Point, Long Island. Unimportant to the world, but famous in American history and legend is this Block Island or Manisees, as the Indians called it, meaning the Isle of God. Here, ever since American liberty was born, there have clung generations of sea-faring, storm-fighting New England men, proud to call themselves Rhode Islanders, though the State to which they belong is so far away that they can only just see its coast. Block Island’s men and women stood on Mehegan Bluff and Beacon Hill and Clay Head, watching their sky fill with fighting tops and enemy flags, and their sea oppressed by enemy craft. Among those who stood there that day were descendants of men who had fought at sea in every American war. Some were there who could boast that their ancestors had crept into Long Island Sound in little sloops, and even in rowing boats, to harry tall King’s ships.[22]