"No, he said not. Jane, dear, you're thinking more horrible things.
She'll be found in the morning, visiting some neighbor or something
of the kind."
But she was not found. Bermuda is a small place. The islands are so
narrow that the ocean on both sides is visible from almost
everywhere. It is only some twelve miles from St. Georges to
Hamilton, and another twelve miles puts one in remote Somerset. By
noon of the next day it was obvious that Eunice Arton was quite
definitely missing.
* * * * *
This next day was May 15th--the first of the real terror brought by
the White Invaders. But we did not call them that yet; they were
still the "ghosts." Bermuda was seething with terror. Every police
station was deluged with reports of the ghostly apparitions. The
white figures of men--in many instances, several figures
together--had been seen during the night in every part of the
islands. A little band of wraiths had marched down the deserted main
street of Hamilton. It was nearly dawn. A few colored men, three or
four roistering visitors, and two policemen had seen them. They had
appeared down at the docks and had marched up the slope of the main
street.
The stories of eye-witnesses to any strange event always are
contradictory. Some said this band of ghostly men marched on the
street level; others said they were below it, walking with only
their heads above the road surface and gradually descending. In any
event the frightened group of onlookers scattered and shouted until
the whole little street was aroused. But by then the ghosts had
vanished.
There were tales of prowlers around houses. Dogs barked in the
night, frantic with excitement, and then shivered with terror,
fearful of what they could sense but not see.
In Hamilton harbor, moored at its dock, was a liner ready to leave
for New York. The deck watch saw ghosts walking apparently in
mid-air over the moonlit bay, and claimed that he saw the white
figure of a man pass through the solid hull-plates of the ship. At
the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse other apparitions were seen; and the St.
David Islanders saw a group of distant figures seemingly a hundred
feet or more beneath the beach--a group, heedless of being observed;
busy with some activity; dragging some apparatus, it seemed. They
pulled and tugged at it, moving it along with them until they were
lost to sight, faded in the arriving dawn and blurred by the white
line of breakers on the beach over them.
The tales differed materially in details. But nearly all mentioned
the dark helmets of strange design, the white, tightly fitting
garments, and many described the dark thread-like wires looped along
the arms and legs, running up into the helmet, and back across the
chest to converge at the belt where there was a clock-like
dial-face.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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