No more attacks were made on the Togarites by sea. This act of reprisal--so obvious, and so successful--gave the government pause. But there was, that same day, an attack by a group of Canadian planes. Whether it was officially planned or not I cannot say. A group of planes, six or eight of them, came down from the border and flew over the enemy territory. This was now about five o'clock in the afternoon. The giants stared up at the invading planes, but did not seem to heed them. The planes were emboldened. Perhaps the pilots figured that these giants could not grow upward fast enough to overtake them. A plane could rise in a few moments to a height of fifteen or twenty thousand feet. No giant could do that. The little squadron of lead-colored war planes flew into the heart of the Togarite territory. The center of it, at this time, was inland from Portland. The planes came low--and one of them dropped a bomb from a height of under a thousand feet. It struck one of the standing giants. Wounded but probably did not kill him. The planes zoomed up and away. They dropped other bombs. One fell into the city of Portland. But none of the planes escaped. These supposedly unarmed giants were most efficaciously armed--with the sling-shot! I have already had occasion to mention it. In the hands of a two-hundred-foot giant, it was a sling thirty or forty feet long. It flung, not a pebble, but a rock huge as a bowlder, with a speed almost of a bullet. Giants leaped into action beneath the soaring planes. To them, the planes were toys, flying only a few times higher than the length of their own bodies. With skilled marksmanship they flung their rocks. The planes were struck. One by one they came crashing down. CHAPTER XXXI _Togaro Strikes_ Father sat that night in the War Department at Washington. He had been in constant consultation with the authorities, for he, more than any one in the world, could explain what manner of people were these Togarites. Yet even father knew very little. "We can't stand up against warfare like this!" exclaimed the war secretary. There were orders given that night that under no circumstances were the Togarites to be attacked. Reprisal by the enemy was too easy--too efficacious. Additional warnings to the public were issued. The enemy was moving slowly southward--the territory in advance of them was ordered abandoned. No need to enforce such orders! A wave of refugees rolled back, a hundred miles in advance of the slow-moving giant lines. Indescribable scenes of confusion and terror marked those days toward the close of May. The Togarites moved largely at night; every dawn found them farther south. They crossed Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The 1st of June found their outposts well into Connecticut, following the north shore of Long Island Sound. New Haven was trampled by a single giant, on June 1--the city wrecked in an hour.