Strong-hearted, like their forefathers, were these men. They looked out on their beset horizon and doubled their sun-burned hands into fists, longing to get among the foe with ship to ship, gun to gun, and the battle-flag of America shining. This was no tame population, to be terrified like a driven herd. Smacksmen were these, accustomed to looking unafraid into the black snarl of storm. Swordfishermen were here who went daily, without a second thought, to fight the lithe spearsman of the sea in his own element. _The First Invader_ A cruiser rushed at their island. Heavy with turreted guns and broadside batteries, tall with laced iron mast-towers and wide funnels and ponderous cranes, swarthy-gray over all like a Vulcan’s smithy, the enormous thing stopped half a mile out with the guns of the secondary batteries pointing at the land. From under her quarter, around bow and stern, swept destroyers with cocked funnels spitting smoke and with ready, alert men at the lean little guns. They moved straight for the little harbor, in a long line. On the bridge of the foremost, an officer waved a hand at the crowd of fishermen on the shore, pointed to his guns, and, with a backward motion, to the cruiser. “Aye! We take the hint, damn ye!” growled an old man. “He means,” he turned to the rest, “that we’d better not make a fuss! Drop that!” He turned sharply to a younger man, who had just joined the group. He had a shot-gun, half concealed under his coat. “Are we going to take it laying down?” demanded the armed man. The old man pushed him backward with both hands. “You fool! That thing out there could blow us off the island, men, women and [Illustration: “Destroyers moved straight for the harbor in a long line.”] children, as if we was dead maple-leaves afore a southeastern gale!” The destroyers had stopped. The crews swung their guns toward the shore. From the cruiser dropped six ships’ boats, full of blue-jackets. They swung past the destroyers, beached, and formed in a line. There was a click of breech-bolts shot home--so quick that it was as but one sound. A Lieutenant advanced his men with the swinging navy trot. He pointed to men in the little throng, selecting six of the older ones. “We take the island,” he said in precise English. “Fall in! We hold you responsible for the good order of the rest of your people. There must be no attempt at resistance.” While he spoke, another detachment of the landing party had been busy among the huddle of boats in the harbor. Some were being made up into a tow. Others were being scuttled at their moorings. A third detachment was knocking holes into the smaller craft hauled up on shore.[23] _The First American to Fall_ Three sailors were just driving boat-hooks through the bottom of an up-turned cat-boat, when a tall young fisherman leaped at them with an oaken tiller-handle, and struck one down.