The enemy planes came from the sea. To the marveling eyes in the American defenses, it seemed as if the ocean were spewing them forth. One after another rose from the Atlantic under Block Island. Three strange vessels lay there. They had funnels set extremely far aft, like certain types of clumsy tramp-ships, but they were big as passenger liners and their lines showed all the efficiency of the naval architect. The great sweep of their decks forward was as bare as the deck of a racing schooner yacht. A structure on short trestles like a skid-way rose from this deck at the bow, projecting slightly. It was there that the aeroplanes were being spewed. These were mother-ships. Torpedo-netted, guarded by destroyers, guarded even by a small semi-rigid dirigible that hovered a thousand feet high over-head, they were sending out spies to search the land. _Twenty-Five Aeroplanes Against a Swarm_ The two United States fliers, standing by their machines in Fort Wright, looked at the ascending swarm. “No wonder!” said one. “You know how many one of those Nations had at last accounts? Twelve hundred!”[42] “And we’ve got thirteen in the Army and twelve in the Navy!” His companion laughed. “And Servia had sixty, before the Great War!” They said no more, but watched in silence. That ascending, continually growing line of flying things was like something that was writing into the sky the word: “Resources!” Suddenly the American air-men noticed that these new machines were not flying to the coast near them. They were turning off, in regular order. One turned west, to fly over Long Island. The next one turned east, toward Buzzards Bay. They alternated thus till the entire division had separated, and disappeared. One of the scouts slapped his thigh. “I believe,” said he, “that they are going to show themselves to Boston and New York!” That was at nine o’clock in the morning. At noon the crowds in the two cities were startled by a distant roar that grew, almost before they had first heard it, into a thundering that shook the air. They stared upward and beheld the first squadron of armed flying machines that America ever had seen. IV THE COAST DEFENSES FALL Armored, with the bright colors of the enemy on their under-bodies, the aeroplanes from the enemy fleet flew low. What few anti-aircraft guns the United States possessed were with the army. Around the peaceful American cities were no encircling fortifications, no batteries, no military works that might conceal marksmen. The air-men knew that there was nothing to fear. They skimmed close to the State House on Boston’s Beacon Hill. They flew over the tall municipal building of New York and dipped toward the City Hall. They appeared over Providence and Fall River, over Brockton, over Bridgeport and New Haven. They passed over every one of the factory-cities of New Jersey that crowd to be near New York’s harbor.