The unhappy man, and other unhappy men like him, went back to their constituencies knowing that now no campaign oratory would serve. Soften the news they must, and would; but they were the bearers of ill tidings, and they knew what comes to these. The stricken cities heard. From all the great coast with its piled gold and silver, there arose a cry. Men shook their fists and cursed the machinery of politics that had worked through the blind years to hinder, to deceive and to waste. The Pork Barrel ceased all at once to be the great American joke. “Throw men into our harbor defenses!” cried the cities of the coast. “Hold them! Hold them!” “We have seventeen thousand trained regulars and 5,000 militia more or less experienced to handle these complex giants,” answered the Army, implacably. “There are 1,184 guns and mortars to handle. It leaves no men to defend the works. To throw the mobile army or any part of it into the defenses for mere protection is only to lock them up. The mobile army must defend the defenses from outside. If it cannot do it, they fall.”[10] “Where is the mobile army?” cried the cities. “Send it here!” clamored each city. There was no reply. Somewhere behind the Atlantic Coast lay the mobile army, silent. The cities stared to sea. They listened for sounds from the sea. That serving ocean that had made them rich and great, had become suddenly terrible, a secret place where there brooded wrath. Every day great multitudes, stirred by helpless, vague impulse, moved toward the waterfronts and gazed down the harbors. Every rumble of blasts or heavy vehicle, every sudden great noise, startled the cities into a quick: “Listen! Cannons!” _The News the Fleet Sent Back_ “Where is the fleet?” The question ran from Maine to Florida, till it, too, became one great clamor, storming at the White House. Again there was no answer. Days before, the American fleet had steamed out of the eastern end of Long Island Sound. The tall, gray dreadnaughts and armored cruisers, each with its circling, savage brood of destroyers; light cruisers, torpedo boats, [Illustration: “Days before, the American fleet had steamed out of Long Island Sound.”] sea-going submarines, hospital ships, auxiliaries and colliers, one by one they had passed into the open sea and vanished. But though no man knew where it was, from its unknown place it spoke by wireless to Washington, and through Washington to the Nation. From “somewhere between the Virginia Capes and the northern end of the Bahama Islands” where it lay, it had sent out its feelers across the sea toward the on-coming foe--swift gray feelers whose tall skeleton fire-control tops were white with watching sailors. And so, presently, between the enemy and the American coast there lay a line of relays to catch the news and pass it on to the Nation and its fleet.