Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1908 — THE VANISHING FLEETS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE VANISHING FLEETS

By ROY NORTON

ULVSHUTKD BY A. WEIL

MW, v TK. AM.d.iU lufcf i4m< Out on the sluggish waves which had now changed to a coldly gleaming gray the other vessels of the Japanese fleet witnessed the beginnings of catastrophe. They had seen this incredibly monstrous thing drop from ether upon their flagship, crumple its upper works like paper, attach itself to the turrets, and then with phenomenal power actually lift from the ocean 20,000 tons of steel—a floating fortress believed but an hour ago to be ’invincible—and bear it away. Even as they watched they saw this strange god which, .had grasped the pride of Japan in his clutch deliberately shaping his flight higher and higher Into the great void of the heavens and passing out of their world. Of what I use were guns against these strange visitants, whose only human mark was the flag of the despised enemy? In hopeless screams of terror their sirens awoke the echoes with weird, despairing walls, and their engines under full speed sent, the screws lashing through the water in a fast desperate effort to escape by flight. And while their prows tore the waves the superstitious sailors took their disaster as an omen, of heavenly wrath, reverted to the religion of their ancestors, and prostrated themselves In an agony of prayer; but every chance was denied them, and even their trust in speed to evade seizure was ineffectual. " Even as the Ito, held fast by the Norma, was becoming a speck against the disk of the morning sky, another of those strange creatures made a scarcely less abrupt descent upon the Kashima. Stacks and masts went down with a crash as had those others. The great, wingless terror picked her up Into the air before her engines could be stopped, and, with her screw beating the atmosphere like the fluttering fins of a fish captured by a marauding eagle, sailed off with her into the blue above. Once more they' tried the effect of gunnery, when the Katori was threatened; but It was futile, and, reading their doom, they waited their turn. It was not long In coming; for now by twos and threes they were torn from the ocean and lifted aloft. The colliers were the last to succumb, and their crews, realizing that the hulls alone would come in contact with the Implacable demons above, ran screaming below decks to continue their supplications to the deaf gods who had deserted them. From the thick glass of bls port the admiral looked down upon his conquered foemen and watched the precision with which his orders were being obeyed. Each time a victim was seized he shouted: “Three’s done her work!” or “Good boy. Seven! Yoy’ve got him!” and so on enumerating each success. ‘ ’ Some movement on the deck of the Ito close at hand arrested his attention. His brows came together again in a fierce scowl. “Stand by the magnet levers, Miss Norma." he com-

mended, “because of those fellows below mean to show the least resistance whatever, we’ll drop 'em!" She had been standing serenely in her hood, her head thrown back, raveling In the glories of triumph. When the fate of the battle, had hung upon her performance, and when her own life was threatened, she had thrown herself body and soul into the fray, wide eyed, unresistant. and without a i tremor; but now, at the thought of beI ing the executioner of perhaps a thousand men, her face blanched, her limbs trembled, and her hands forgot their task and clasped together in imploratlon. She was the woman again, ready to plead for the lives of those she had conquered. "My God! You wouldn’t do that, would you?** she said. The old gladiator of the sea tuned upon her fiercely. “Do ItT Do it? Td

drop them to hell as quick as T would to the bottom of the Pacific If they show fight!" be responded. "We’re out here to teach a lesson, and they i|Mprve all that’s coming to ’em! War la no child’s game,” he concluded grimly, "and the first ship that wants trouble goes down like A thunderbolt." </'v~ - As If to emphasize his remark, he sprang to the signal box and Issued this sanguinary order to every radloplane In the fleet, while Norma, faint and sick at heart, shut her teeth and with a look of Inexpressible pain turned back to her levers. But she was spared this dreadful work. The Japanese officers and men had learned the absolute futility of resistance, . and doubted- the efficacy of appeal! Their one hope for life now rested In the humanity and leniency of those who held them in thrall.

It took no long chain of reasoning to conclude that -an enemy who could pluck them from the seas and without visible, effort lift them more than a mile high could as readily release his hold and send them to destruction with meteorllke speed. Even were it possible to destroy those mpnsters which clutched them, to do so would be self-annihilation. They were Ignored, cut off from those above, and divorced from the waters beneath as If they were creatures of no importance, to be treated like mere troublesome Insects, exterminated or spared as their captor’s whim might dictate. The glory of an easy conquest in the Philippines, the boastings which had followedthesubJugafion of .Hawaii, the pomp and circumstance of previous conquests—all were obliterated, all erased from the scroll of valorous deeds by an action which had lasted less than an hour. And now, like beaten legionaries chained to the victor’s car, they were being carried away toward the rising sun and an unknown fate.

CHAPTER XIX. The Eagle's Flight.

No stranger spectacle was ever outlined against the sky than that of the fate-laden morning, when at a height es more than three miles above the sea the emperor's ships were borne away. A child full of life, energy and vivacity, clutched in the Inflexible talons of a merciless eagle, and hurtled Into the empyrean, would have been no more helpless. The sun’s rays were now painting the surface of a farreaching, untenanted ocean, on whose waves no sail caught the breeze, and across whose depths sallied no squadrons. The day of Its abandonment was at hand, and the time not distant

when seafaring was to become merely legendary. In the profound solitude of the upper air the radioplanes swung majestically In a wide circle, and then like a flock of geese in homeward flight formed a long line which In stately procession directed its course to the east

The Japanese knew by the faces staring at them from the bellies of the monsters which had gathered them in that they were in the grasp of the enemy, and impotent, although throughout that trying day no word was addressed to them. Once, from their lofty planes of transit, they saw through their glasses a dim outline on the far southern horizon whose faint blue haze held Honolulu, designated as a stopping place, but which they were never to reach—destined to be a port for naught but phantom ships—a port of dreams. To them their progress through the air was at a terrifying speed, and the wind of flight sweeping in a gale across across their decks drove them to shelter; but they did not know that the machines above them were working .at slow strength, in order that their coming to the shores of the American continent might be unwitnessed and unheralded. The hours slipped away, until below them the shadows lengthened and deepened and the waves were no longer seen. Up in their aerial path the dusk was. falling, when simultaneously they came to a halt and hung motionless in midair. Officers and men the decks to learn what this change might protend, and as they djd so they discovered that the silent monsters were clustered in what seemed perilous proximity to the craft holding their redoubtable flagship, the Ito. On the bridge of the latter appeared the admiral of the fleet, Kamigawa, his impassive face showing nothing to his followers of the strain under which ho had labored during those long hours of captivity. Like his fellow officers, he looked at the assemblage, anxious io know the cause of the abrupt stop, and then aloft to the engines of victory, from each of which there whipped and cracked in the evening breeze the Stan and stripes. The grinding noise of metal sliding over metal attracted his attention, and almost before it had ceased a man clad in the blue uniform of the United States navy leaned out of a huge port, holding himself by his hand, and frowning down at the men upon the Ito’s bridge. “Good evening, Kamigawa!** a voice hailed with gruff resonance, and ho recognized Bovins, who bad been an Instructor in the naval academy of the nation which had presented him with post-graduate instruction, and which be had come to assault. "Good evening, admiral," he responded in excellent English, mentally thankful that he had offered no greater resistance to this famous bulldog of the sea; but with no taint of shame clouding his mind in thus being recalled to the fact that ho had 'Sttempted war upon a country which had helped to educate him, of which he had been a guest of honor, and to which be owed much in knowledge of seamanship. ■ ■

"R gives me-much-pleasure,” resumed the voice above in a tone of cold courtesy, "to request that you at ipnce go through the formality of surrendering your entire fleet, and signal the other vessels from your flagship that In behalf of yourself and men you accept parole under the usual provision that neither you nor any of your men will bear arms against the United States during the remainder of this war.” "But I can’t do that!" Kamlgawa protested In a tone of bitterness. "Very well,” came the curt answer. "I shall at once drop you, and 1 1 can assure you that nothing will give me greater Joy.”

(To be continued.)

The Great Wingless Terror Picked Her Up Into the Air.