_Ambushed!_
The events which I have now to describe are world history, and have
been written in many forms and by many observers. I must, however,
sketch them in broadest outline for the continuity of this personal
narrative of the parts played by my friends and myself in the dire
and astounding affair which was soon to bring chaos, not only to
little Bermuda but to the great United States as well, and a near
panic everywhere in the world.
On this evening of May 15th, 1938, the White Invaders showed
themselves for the first time as rational human enemies. The
residential suburb of Paget lies across the little harbor from the
city of Hamilton. It is a mile or so by road around the bay, and a
few minutes across the water by ferry. The island in the Paget
section is a mere strip of land less than half a mile wide in most
places, with the sheltered waters of the harbor on one side, and the
open Atlantic with a magnificent pink-white beach on the other. The
two are divided by a razor-back ridge--a line of little hills a
hundred feet or so high, with narrow white roads and white stone
residences set on the hill-slopes amid spacious lawns and tropical
gardens; and with several lavish hotels on the bay shore, and others
over the ridge, fronting the beach.
The invaders landed on the top of the ridge. It seemed that, without
warning, a group of white-clad men were in a cedar grove up there.
They spread out, running along the roads. They seemed carrying small
hand-weapons from which phosphorescent-green light-beams flashed
into the night.
The first reports were chaotic. A few survivors appeared in Hamilton
who claimed to have been very close to the enemy. But for the most
part the descriptions came from those who had fled when still a mile
or more away. The news spread as though upon the wings of a gale.
Within an hour the hotels were emptied; the houses all along the
shore and the bayside hill-slope were deserted by their occupants.
Boats over there brought the excited people into Hamilton until no
more boats were available. Others came madly driving around the
harbor road, on bicycles, and on foot--and still others escaped
toward distant Somerset.
* * * * *
A thousand people or more came in within that hour. But there were
others who did not come--those who were living in the score or two
of houses up on the ridge in the immediate neighborhood of where the
invaders appeared....
Don and I met Mr. Dorrance at the police station within a few
minutes after the news of the Paget attack reached us. We hurried
back to the restaurant and found Jane still there with the
Blakinsons. Ten minutes later we were all in the Government House,
receiving the most authentic reports available.
From the windows of the second floor room where Mr. Dorrance sat
with a number of the officials, Don, Jane, and I could see across
the harbor and to the ridge where the enemy was operating. It was
not much over two miles from us. The huge, slightly flattened moon
had risen. The bay and the distant little hills were flooded with
its light. We could see, off on the ridge-top, the tiny flashing
green beams. But there was no sound save the turmoil of the excited
little city around us.
"They don't seem to be moving," Don murmured. "They're right where
they were first reported."
It seemed as though the small group of light-beams, darting back and
forth, nevertheless originated from one unshifting place. The beams,
we realized, must be extremely intense to be visible even these two
miles or so, for we could see that they were very small and of very
short range--more like a hand-flashlight than anything else. How
many of the enemy were there? They were men, we understood: solid,
human men garbed in the fashion of the apparitions which had been so
widely seen.
The patrolling airplane, connected with us here by wireless
telephone, gave us further details. There seemed to be some fifty of
the invaders. They stood in a group in what had been a small cedar
grove. It was a barren field now; the trees had melted and vanished
before the silent blasts of the green light-beams. They had, these
beams, seemingly a range of under a hundred feet. The invaders had,
at first, run with them along the nearby roads and attacked the
nearest houses. Part of those houses were still standing, save for
the wooden portion of them which had vanished into nothingness as
the green light touched it. The people, too, were annihilated. The
airplane pilot had seen a man running near the field trying to
escape. The light touched him, clung to him for a moment. There was
an instant as he fell that he seemed melting into a ghostly figure;
and then he was gone.
* * * * *
Fifty invaders. But they were human; they could be attacked. When
they first appeared, the nature of them still unrealized, a
physician's automobile, manned by three soldiers, had been coming
along the bay road at the foot of the ridge. The soldiers turned it
into a cross road and mounted the hill. Two of them left it,
scouting to see what was happening; the other stayed in the car. One
of the enemy suddenly appeared. His ray struck the car. Its tires,
its woodwork, and fabric and cushions melted and vanished, and the
man within it likewise disappeared. Everything organic vanished
under the assailing green beam. The other two soldiers fired at the
attacker. He was human. He fell as their bullets struck him. Then
others of his fellows came running. The two soldiers were driven
away, but they escaped to tell of the encounter.
The airplane pilot, half an hour later, flew low and fired down into
the group of enemy figures. He thought that one of them fell. He
also thought he was out of range of their beams. But a pencil-point
of the green light thinned and lengthened out. It darted up to his
hundred-and-fifty-foot altitude and caught one of his wings. The
plane fell disabled into the bay near the city docks, but the pilot
swam safely ashore.
I need not detail the confusion and panic of the government
officials who were gathered here in the room where Don, Jane and I
stood watching and listening to the excitement of the incoming
reports. For quiet little Bermuda the unprecedented situation was
doubly frightening. An attack would have to be made upon the
invaders. There were only fifty of the enemy; the soldiers and the
police could in a few hours be mobilized to rush them and kill them
all.
But could that be done? The thing had so many weird aspects, the
invaders still seemed so much in the nature of the supernatural,
that Mr. Dorrance advised caution. The enemy was now--this was about
ten o'clock in the evening--quietly gathered in the little field on
the ridge-top. They seemed, with their first attack over, no longer
offensive. But, if assailed, who could say what they would do?
* * * * *
And a thousand unprecedented things to do were pressing upon the
harassed officials. Panic-stricken crowds now surged out of all
control in the Hamilton streets. Refugees were coming in, homeless,
needing care. The soldiers and the police were scattered throughout
the islands, without orders of what to do to meet these new
conditions.
And new, ever more frightening reports poured in. The telephone
service, which links as a local call nearly every house throughout
the islands, was flooded with frantic activity. From nearly every
parish came reports of half-materialized ghosts. Fifty invaders?
There were that many gathered on the Paget hill, but it seemed that
there must be a thousand watching apparitions scattered throughout
the islands. Harmless, merely frightening, wraiths. But if that
little group in Paget were assailed, this other thousand might in a
moment cease to be harmless "ghosts."
The astounded Bermuda officials were forced now to accept the
realization that this was solid science. Incredible, fantastic,
unbelievable--yet here it was upon us. Some unknown, invisible realm
co-existed here in this same space. Its inhabitants had found a way
to come out.
The government wireless, and the Canadian cables, could no longer
withhold such news as this. Bermuda appealed now to Washington and
to London for help. Warships would be coming shortly. Passenger
liners on the high seas bringing holiday visitors, were turned
aside. The ships in the port of New York would not sail for Bermuda
tomorrow.
I think that the outside world would have had jeering publics amused
at little Bermuda hysterical over a fancied attack from the fabled
fourth dimension. But by midnight this night, the United States at
least was in no mood for jeering. A message came--reaching us soon
after eleven o'clock, Bermuda time--by cable, through Halifax from
Washington. The thing already had passed beyond the scope of the
Bermudas. White apparitions were seen on the Atlantic seaboard near
Savannah. And then at Charleston; and throughout the night at
several other points farther north. None materialized into solidity.
But the "ghosts" were seen, appearing, vanishing, and reappearing
always farther north.
It was a world menace!
* * * * *
At about midnight Mr. Dorrance joined Jane, Don and me where we
stood by the Government House windows watching the distant
motionless group of enemy lights. He was pale and harassed.
"No use for you to stay here," he told us. "Don, you and Bob take
Jane home. It's the safest place now."
The reports seemed to indicate that of all the parishes, St. Georges
was now most free of the apparitions.
"Go home," he insisted. "You and Bob stay with Jane. Take care of
her, lads." He smiled grimly. "We--all the government--may be moving
to St. Georges by morning."
"But, father," Jane protested, "what will you do? Stay here?"
"For a while. I'll drive over by daybreak. I'll keep the Victoria.
You have your cycles; you three ride over. Be careful, lads. You
have your revolvers?"
"Yes," said Don.
We had no time for leave-taking. He was at once called away from us.
We left the Government House shortly after that, got our bicycles
and started for the north shore road. Government Hill, where the
road climbed through a deep cut in the solid rock, was thronged with
carriages, and with cyclists walking up the hill. Most of the
traffic was going in one direction--refugees leaving this proximity
to the enemy.
We reached the top of the hill, mounted and began the long coast
down. In an hour and a half or less we would be home.... Ah, if one
could only lift the veil which hides even the immediate future, upon
the brink of which we must always stand unseeing!
The north-shore road had the rocky seacoast upon our left--calm
moonlit ocean across which in this direction lay the Carolinas some
seven hundred miles away. We had gone, perhaps three miles from
Hamilton. The road was less crowded here. A group of apparitions had
been seen in the neighborhood of the Aquarium, which was ahead of
us, and most of the refugees were taking the middle road along
Harrington Sound in the center of the island.
But we decided to continue straight on. It was shorter.
"And there will be more police along here," Don reasoned.
Heaven knows we did not feel in immediate danger. Cycling soldiers
passed us at frequent intervals, giving us the news of what lay
ahead. And we both had revolvers.
* * * * *
We came presently to the bottom of one of the many steep little
hills up which it is difficult to ride. We were walking up the
grade, pushing our machines with Jane between us. A group of
soldiers came coasting down the hill, but when we were half-way up
they had passed out of sight. It chanced at the moment that we were
alone on the road. No house was near us. The ocean to our left lay
at the bottom of a fifty-foot rocky cliff; to the right was a thick
line of oleander trees, heavy with bloom.
Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowing
white figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breath
from the climb, and stood by the roadside.
"See it there?" Don murmured. "Let's wait and watch it a moment."
One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, no
more than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk.
It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, with
helmet and looped wires.
"Not that fellow who called himself Tako," I whispered.
This one was smaller, no larger than Jane, perhaps. He raised his
arms as though warning us to stop. We stood gazing at him, undecided
whether to retreat or advance. An omnibus carriage coming from St.
Georges stopped at the brow of the hill. Its occupants climbed out
and began shouting at the apparition, at the same time flinging
stones, one of which came bounding past us.
"Hi!" I called. "Stop that! No sense to that!"
* * * * *
Suddenly I heard a rustling of the oleanders at my side. We had no
warning; our attention was wholly upon the apparition and the men by
the carriage on the brow of the hill flinging stones. There was a
rustling; the shadowed oleanders parted and figures leaped upon us!
I recall hearing Don shout, and Jane cry out. Our cycles clattered
to the road. I fired at an oncoming white figure, but missed. The
solid form of a man struck me and I went down, tangled in my wheel.
There was an instant when I was conscious of fighting madly with a
human antagonist. I was conscious of Don fighting, too. Jane stood,
gripped by a man. Four or five of them had leaped upon us.
I had many instant impressions; then as I fought something struck my
head and I faded into insensibility. I must have recovered within a
moment. I was lying on the ground, partly upon a bicycle.
Don was lying near me. White figures of men with Jane in their midst
were standing off the road, partly behind the bushes. They were
holding her, and one of them was swiftly adjusting a network of
wires upon her. Then, as I revived further, I heard shouts; people
were arriving from down the hill. I tried to struggle to my feet,
but fell back.
In the bushes the figures--and the figure of Jane--were turning
silvery; fading into wraiths. They drifted down into the ground.
They were gone.