In the Clutch of the War-God Part 4

"Oh, no," he replied, "nothing of the sort; we are simply bluffing.

There are a number of expeditions going out to-day. We must make the appearance of a great invasion."

"How many planes are there all told?"

Komoru smiled. "Not so many," he said.

"But how many?" persisted Ethel.

"Fifteen thousand, maybe," Komoru replied.

"To invade a country with nearly two hundred million inhabitants! We will surely all be killed."

Komoru smiled.

"By sheer force of numbers," explained Ethel.

"Wait and see," replied her enigmatical companion.

For hours the little aerial squadron sailed through the balmy air of Texas. They pa.s.sed over Austin and Waco and Fort Worth and Dallas.

They turned eastward and pa.s.sed over Texarkana, and thence south to impress the people of Shreveport.

The excitement evinced in the towns increased as the news of their flight was wired ahead. They were frequently shot at by groups of excited citizens or occasional companies of militia, but at the height and speed at which they were flying the bullets went wide.

One plane was lost. Something must have snapped. It doubled up and went tumbling downward like a wounded pigeon.

The sun was dropping toward the western horizon. The invaders had been flying for ten hours. They had been without food or sleep for thirty-six hours. Save for the brief relaxation of the morning, Komoru had not taken his hands from the steering wheel, nor his foot from the engine control since the previous sunset in the Bay of Tehauntepec.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The two women of Aryan blood worked together in the cotton field side by side with the Orientals.]

As they pa.s.sed near other planes, Ethel noted that in many cases the women were driving. Notwithstanding her dislike for him, the girl found herself wishing that she could relieve Komoru.

She pondered over his "wait and see" and began to discern a new possibility in an invasion of thirty thousand j.a.panese. She tried to imagine one of the society favorites of her Chicago girlhood sitting in front of her driving that plane. She remembered distinctly that aeroplane racing was a part of the diversion of such men and that five or six hours of driving was considered quite a feat.

The more she considered the man before her, the more she marvelled at his powers. She confessed he interested her; she wondered why she disliked him. The only answer that seemed acceptable was that he was "not her kind."

Towards dusk, they hove in sight of the derricks of the Beaumont oil region. The leader with the red plane descended in a large meadow.

Komoru was well to the front and brought his plane to earth a few meters from the red wings. The man in the flag plane who had that day led them over a thousand miles and a score of cities got out and stretched himself. With an exclamation of joyful surprise, Ethel recognized that he was Professor Oshima.

The j.a.panese camped where they were for the night. The wings of the planes were guyed to the ground with cordage and little steel stakes. Beneath such improvised tents the tired aerial cavalrymen rolled themselves in their sleeping blankets and for twelve hours the camp was as quiet as a graveyard.

That day had been a great day in history; it was the first consequential aerial invasion that the world had ever known. While the arrivals of the morning had been circling in fear-inspiring flights above the neighboring states, the later starters from the j.a.panese squadron had continued to arrive in the oil regions. Like migrating birds, they settled down over the rich fields and grazing lands of that wonderful strip of flat, black-soiled prairie that stretches westward from the south center of Louisiana until it emerges into the great semi-arid cattle plains of southern Texas.

The region, though one of the richest in the United States, was but spa.r.s.ely settled. Save for the few thousand white laborers who were supported by the oil industry, the whole resident population were negroes who were worked under imported white foremen in the rice and truck lands of the region.

The negroes were panic stricken by the j.a.panese invasion and made practically no resistance. In two or three days, the country for a forty-mile radius around Beaumont was cleared of Americans and practically the entire oil region of Texas with its vast storage tanks at Port Arthur on the Sabine River, were in the hands of the invaders.

There were not ten regiments of American soldiers within five hundred miles. The great ma.s.s of the American army had been rushed weeks before to southern California, and the remnant left in the Gulf region had more recently been hastened to Panama. In fact, the American squadron had steamed into Colon on the very morning the j.a.panese alighted on Texas soil.

On the second morning of their arrival, j.a.panese officials circling above the captured region, roughly allotted the land to Captains under whose leadership were a hundred planes each. The captains then a.s.signed each couple places to stake their plane, which were located a hundred meters apart, allowing to each about two and a half acres of land.

Professor Oshima and Komoru, as soil chemists, were constantly on the go making studies of the land and advising with the other experts as to the crops to plant, and the methods of tillage for the various locations.

In the cotton lands, where Ethel and her a.s.sociates were located, the soil was immediately put to a fuller use. The cotton plants were thinned and pruned and between the rows quick growing vegetables were planted. Elsewhere the great pastures were broken up with captured kerosene-driven gang plows and by dint of hard labor the sod was quickly reduced to a fit state for intensive cultivation.

The outside work of the professor and his secretary threw Ethel altogether in the company of Madame Oshima. For this fact she was very grateful, as her aversion to Komoru, to whom she was nominally bound, grew more and more a source of worry and fear. So the two women of Aryan blood worked together in the cotton field side by side with the Orientals--worked and waited and wondered what was awing in the surrounding world.

The gasoline wagons came around and refilled the fuel tanks of the planes. Mechanics inspected the engines carefully and replaced defective parts. The rice cakes and soyu brought from j.a.pan, had been replaced by a diet of wheat and maize products and fresh fruits and vegetables taken from the captured stores and gardens. Such captured foods, however, had all been inspected by the dieteticians, and those of doubtful wholesomeness destroyed or placed under lock and key to be used only as a last resort.

Thus weeks pa.s.sed. The green things of j.a.panese planting had poked their tender shoots through the black American soil. There had been no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy militia or a local posse had tried to attach the j.a.panese outposts.

American aeroplanes had wisely staid away.

But the fight was yet to come. The Federal Government had recalled its ships from Panama and was bringing back the soldiers from California. On the great flat prairie between Galveston and Houston, a mighty military camp was being established. Aeroplane sheds were erected and repair shops built. Long lines of army tents were pitched in close proximity. Army canteens were established that the thirsty soldiers might get pure liquor and good tobacco and a few rods away--over the line--other grog shops were opened wherein were sold similar goods not so guaranteed. Gambling sharks arrived and set up sh.e.l.l games and bedraggled prost.i.tutes--outcasts from urban centers of debauchery---came and camped nearby and made night hideous with their obscene revelry.

So the American soldier prepared for battle against the enemy who, fifty miles away, slept undisturbed in the midst of gardens beneath the wings of their aeroplanes.

Never since Roman phalanx moved against the hordes of disorganized barbarians had such extremes of method in warfare been pitted against each other. Indeed it is doubtful if the invasion of the j.a.panese should be called war at all. They were not blood-thirsty.

In fact, the j.a.panese invaders had sent word to the American Government a.s.serting their peaceful intentions if they were unmolested, though threatening dire vengeance by firing cities and poisoning water supplies if they were attacked.

Madame Oshima shook her head. "Such talk is only pretense," she said, "the j.a.panese intend to live in America and would never so embitter the people--and it will not be necessary."

Ethel was in doubt. She pictured the j.a.panese planes flying above the unprotected inland cities dropping conflagration bombs upon shingled roof or casks of prussic acid into open reservoirs. She wished she were out of it all. She wanted to escape and yet she knew not how.

The Americans made no hasty attacks. They feared the threats of the j.a.panese and awaited the gathering of many hundred thousand soldiers. At the end of four weeks the American army was spread in a giant semi-circle surrounding the j.a.panese encampment from coast to coast. Along the Gulf Coast was also a line of American battleships, so that the j.a.panese encampment was entirely surrounded with an almost continuous line of aeroplane destroying guns.

All preparations were at last complete and with cavalry beneath and aeroplanes above, the American strategists planned a dash across the j.a.panese territory with the belief that the outlying lines of artillery would bring to earth those that succeeded in getting into the air.

One evening at the hour of twilight, messengers pa.s.sed rapidly among the j.a.panese distributing maps and orders to prepare for flight.

Late that night, their possessions made ready for flight, Komoru and Ethel sat with Professor and Madame Oshima beneath the latter's plane.

"Our scouts have come to the conclusion," said Oshima, "that a cavalry attack is to be expected in the early morning. So our plan is for a signal plane to rise at two o'clock directly over the center of our territory. It will carry a bright yellow light.

Beginning with the outlying groups our forces are to fly toward the light, rising as they go. Attaining an alt.i.tude of two miles they are thence to fly due north as our maps show. We will suffer some loss, but two miles high and at night I guess American gunners will not inflict great damage."

Ethel shuddered.

"Do you think the American aviators will follow us?" asked Komoru.

"That depends," replied the older man, "upon the reception we give them; we have them outnumbered."

"They carry men gunners," said Madame Oshima.

"So," said the Professor, "but shooting from an aeroplane depends not so much upon the gunner as upon the steersman. Their planes wabble, the metal frame work is too stiff, it doesn't yield to the air pressure."

Along such lines the conversation continued for an hour or so.

Neither the men nor Madame Oshima seemed the least bit excited over the prospects; but Ethel, striving to keep up external appearances, was inwardly torn with warring emotions.

Making an excuse of wishing to look for something among her luggage, the girl finally escaped and walked quickly toward the other plane.