Chapter 10
A steamer is lying at the pier taking in cargo. Long-legged cranes are taking hold of bales and barrels and boxes and lowering them through the ship's hatches with a rattle of chains. Wooden cases bound with steel ropes and containing heavy machinery are being hoisted slowly from the lorries on the railway tracks; the swaying burden is turning round and round in the air, knocking against the railing with a groaning noise, and tearing off large splinters of wood. The overseer is swearing at the men at the windlass and comparing his papers with the slips of the customs officer, the one making a blue check on the bill of lading and the other taking note of each article on his long list. Suddenly a small box comes to light, which has been waiting patiently since yesterday under the sheltering tarpaulin. "A box of optical instruments," says the customs officer, making a blue check. "A box of optical instruments," repeats the overseer, making a mark with his moistened pencil-stump: "Careful!" he adds, as a workman is on the point of tipping the heavy box over. Then the hook of the crane seizes the loop in the steel rope and with a stuttering rattling sound the wheels of the windlass set to work, the steel wire grips the side of the box tightly, the barrel beside it is pushed aside, and a wooden case enclosing a piece of cast-iron machinery is scraped angrily over the slippery cobble-stones. Heave ho, heave ho, chant the men, pushing with all their might. To the accompaniment of splashing drops of oily water, puffs of steam, groans of the windlass and the yells and curses of the stevedores, the whole load, including the box of optical instruments, at last disappears in the hold of the ship. It is placed securely between rolls of cardboard next to some nice white boxes filled with shining steel goods. But when the noise up above has died down, when with the approach of darkness the rattling of the chains and the groaning of the windlasses has ceased, when only the slow step of the deck-watch finds an echo--then it can be heard. Inside the box you can hear a gentle but steady tick, tick, tick. The clock-work is wound up and set to the exact second. Tick, tick, tick it goes. When the ship is far out at sea and the passengers are asleep and the watch calls out: "Lights are burning. All's well!" then the works will have run down, the spring will stop and loosen a little hammer. Ten kilograms of dynamite suffice. A quarter of an hour later there'll be nothing left of the proud steamer but a few boats loaded down with people and threatening every moment to be engulfed in the waves.
Tick, tick, tick, it goes down in the hold; the clock is set. Tick, tick, tick, it goes on unceasingly, till the unknown hour arrives. No one suspects the true nature of a piece of the cargo which certainly looked innocent enough. Yet the hour is bound to come sooner or later, but no one knows just when.
* * * * *
Nor had the country at large recognized that the hour was at hand. In the time that it took the short hand of the clock to complete its round four times, our country had completely changed its complexion, and the balance drawn by the press on Tuesday morning after an interval of forty-eight hours, had a perfectly crushing effect. Of course the appearance of the enemy in the West at once produced a financial panic in New York. On Monday morning the Wall Street stock-quotations of the trans-continental railroads fell to the lowest possible figure, rendering the shares about as valuable as the paper upon which they were printed. Apparently enormous numbers of shares had been thrown on the market in the first wild panic, but an hour after the opening of the Stock Exchange, after billions had changed hands in mad haste, a slight rise set in as a result of wholesale purchases by a single individual. Yet even before this fact had been clearly recognized, the railway magnates of the West had bought up all the floating stock without exception. They could afford to wait for the millions they would pocket until the American army had driven the enemy from the country.
At the same time selling orders came pouring in from the other side by way of London. The Old World lost no time in trying to get rid of its American stocks, and the United States were made to realize that in the hour of a political catastrophe every nation has to stand on its own feet, and that all the diplomatic notes and the harmless sentimentalities of foreign states will avail nothing. So it was after the terrible night of Port Arthur and so it was now.
It was of course as yet impossible to figure out in detail how the Japanese had managed to take possession of the Pacific States within twenty-four hours. But from the dispatches received from all parts of the country during the next few days and weeks the following picture could be drawn. The number of Japanese on American soil was in round numbers one hundred thousand. The Japanese had not only established themselves as small tradesmen and shopkeepers in the towns, but had also settled everywhere as farmers and fruit-growers; Japanese coolies and Mongolian workmen were to be found wherever new buildings were going up as well as on all the railways. The yellow flood was threatening to destroy the very foundations of our domestic economy by forcing down all wage-values. The yellow immigrant who wrested spade and shovel, ax and saw, from the American workman, who pushed his way into the factory and the workshop and acted as a heartless strike breaker, was not only found in the Pacific States but had pushed his way across the Rockies into the very heart of the eastern section. And scarcely had he settled anywhere, before, with the typical Tsushima grin, he demanded his political rights. The individual Jap excited no suspicion and did not become troublesome, but the Mongolians always managed to distribute their outposts on American soil in such a way that the Japanese element never attracted undue attention in any one particular spot. Nevertheless they were to be found everywhere.
We had often been told that every Japanese who landed on the Pacific Coast or crossed the Mexican or Canadian borders was a trained soldier. But we had always regarded this fact more as a political curiosity or a Japanese peculiarity than as a warning. We never for a moment realized that this whole immigration scheme was regulated by a perfect system, and that every Japanese immigrant had received his military orders and was in constant touch with the secret military centers at San Francisco, who at stated periods sent out Japanese traders and agents--in reality they were officers of the general staff, who at the same time made important topographical notes for use in case of war--to control their movements. Both the lumber companies in the State of Washington, which brought hundreds of Japanese over from Canada, and the railways which employed Japanese workmen were equally ignorant of the fact that they had taken a Japanese regiment into their employ.
Thus preparations for the coming war were conducted on a large scale during the year 1907, until the ever-increasing flow of Japanese immigrants finally led to those conflicts with which we are familiar. At the time we regarded it as a triumph of American diplomacy when Japan, in the face of California's threatening attitude, apparently gave in after a little diplomatic bickering and issued the well-known proclamation concerning emigration to Hawaii and the Pacific States, at the same time dissolving several emigration companies at home.
As a matter of fact Japan had already completed her military preparations in our country in times of absolute peace, the sole difficulty experienced being in connection with the concentration of the remaining coolie importations. The Japanese invasion, which our politicians dismissed as possible only in the dim and distant future, was actually completed at the beginning of the year 1908. A Japanese army stood prepared and fully armed right in our midst, merely waiting until the military and financial conditions at home rendered the attack feasible.
When we glance to-day through the newspapers of that period, we cannot help but smile at allowing ourselves to be persuaded that the Japanese danger had been removed by the diplomatic retreat in Tokio and the prohibition of emigration to North America. Our papers stated at the time that Japan had recognized that she had drawn the bow too tight and that she had yielded because Admiral Evans's fleet had demonstrated conclusively that we were prepared. That only goes to show how little we knew of the Mongolian character!
We had become so accustomed to the large Japanese element in the population of our Western States, that we entirely neglected to control the harmless looking individuals. To be sure there wasn't a great deal to be seen on the surface, but it would have been interesting to examine some of the goods smuggled so regularly across the Mexican and Canadian borders. Why were we content to allow the smuggling to continue without interference, simply because we felt it couldn't be stamped out anyhow? The Japanese did not resort to the hackneyed piano-cases and farming machinery; they knew better than to employ such clumsy methods. The goods they sent over the line consisted of neat little boxes full of guns and other weapons which had been taken apart. And when a Japanese farmer ordered a hay-cart from Canada, it was no pure chance that the remarkably strong wheels of this cart exactly fitted a field-gun. The barrel was brought over by a neighbor, who ordered iron columns for his new house, inside of which the separate parts of the barrel were soldered. It was in this way that, in the course of several years, the entire equipment for the Japanese army came quietly and inconspicuously across our borders.
And then the Japanese are so clever, clever in putting together and mounting their guns, clever in disguising them. Did it ever enter anyone's head that the amiable landlord who cracked so many jokes at the Japanese inn not far from the railroad station at Reno commanded a battalion? Did anyone suppose that the casks of California wine in his cellar in reality enclosed six machine-guns, and that in the yard behind the house there was sufficient material to equip an entire company of artillery inside of two hours, and that plenty of ammunition was stored away in the attic in boxes and trunks ostensibly left by travelers to be held until called for? As long as there's sufficient time at disposal, all these things can be imported into the country bit by bit, and without ever coming into conflict with the government.
Things began to stir about the end of April. A great many Japs were traveling about the country, but there was no reason why this circumstance should have attracted special notice in a country like ours where so much traveling is constantly done. The enemy were assembling. The people arrived at the various stations and at once disappeared in the country, bound for the different headquarters in the solitudes of the mountains. There each one found his ammunition, his gun and his uniform exactly as it was described in Japanese characters on the paper which he had received on landing, and which had more than once been officially revised or supplemented as the result of information received from chance acquaintances who had paid him a visit.
Everything worked like a charm; there wasn't a hitch anywhere. No one had paid any particular attention to the fact, for example, in connection with the fair to be held in the small town of Irvington on May eighth, that numerous carts with Japanese farmers had arrived on the Saturday before and that they had brought several dozen horses with them. And who could object to their putting up at the Japanese inn which, with its big stables, was specially suited to their purpose. At first the Japanese owner had been laughed at, but later on he was admired for his business ability in keeping the horse trade of Irvington entirely in his own hands.
When on the following day during church hours--the Japanese being heathens--the streets lay deserted in their Sunday calm, the few people who happened to be on Main Street and saw a field battery consisting of six guns and six ammunition wagons turn out of the gate next to the Japanese inn thought they had seen an apparition. The battery started off at once at a sharp trot and left the town to take up a position out in a field in the suburbs, where a dozen men were already busily at work with spades and pick-axes digging a trench.
The police of Irvington were at once notified, a sleepy official at the Post Office was roused out of his slumbers, and a telegram was directed to the nearest military post, but the latter proceeding was useless and no answer was received, since the copper wires were long ago in the control of the enemy. Even if it had got through, the telegraphic warning would have come too late, for the military post in question, of which half of the troops were, as usual, on leave, had been attacked and captured by the Japanese at nine o'clock in the morning.
A hundred thousand Japanese had established the line of an eastern advance-guard long before the Pacific States had any idea of what was up. During Sunday, after the capture of San Francisco, the occupation of Seattle, San Diego and the other fortified towns on the coast, the landing of the second detachment of the Japanese army began, and by Monday evening the Pacific States were in the grip of no less than one hundred and seventy thousand men.
* * * * *
When, on Sunday morning, the Japanese had cut off the railway connections, they adopted the plan of allowing all trains going from east to west to pass unmolested, so that there was soon quite a collection of engines and cars to be found within the zone bounded by the Japanese outposts. On the other hand, all the trains running eastward were held up, some being sent back and others being used for conveying the Japanese troops to advance posts or for bringing the various lines of communication into touch with one another. In some cases these trains were also used for pushing boldly much farther east, the enemy thus surprising and overpowering a number of military posts and arsenals in which the guns and ammunition for the militia were stored.
Only in a very few instances did this gigantic mechanism fail. One of these accidents occurred at Swallowtown, where the mistake was made of attacking the express-train to Umatilla instead of the local train to Pendleton. The lateness of the former and the occupation of the station too long before the expected arrival of the latter, and coupled to this the heroic deed of the station-master, interfered unexpectedly with the execution of the plan. The reader will remember that when the express returned to Swallowtown, Tom's shanty was empty. The enemy had disappeared and had taken the two captive farmers with them. The mounted police, who had been summoned immediately from Walla Walla, found the two men during the afternoon in their wagon, bound hand and foot, in a hollow a few miles to the west of the station. They also discovered a time-table of the Oregon Railway in the wagon, with a note in Japanese characters beside the time for the arrival of the local train from Umatilla. This time-table had evidently been lost by the leader of the party on his flight. Soon after the police had returned to the Swallowtown station that same evening, a Japanese military train passed through, going in the direction of Pendleton. The train was moving slowly and those within opened fire on the policeman, who lost no time in replying. But the odds were too great, and it was all over in a few minutes.
By Monday evening the enemy had secured an immense quantity of railway material, which had simply poured into their arms automatically, and which was more than sufficient for their needs.
The information received from Victoria (British Columbia) that a fleet had been sighted in the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, whence it was said to have proceeded to Port Townsend and Puget Sound, was quite correct. A cruiser squadron had indeed passed Esquimault and Victoria at dawn on Sunday, and a few hours later firing had been heard coming from the direction of Port Townsend. The British harbor officials had suddenly become extremely timid and had not allowed the regular steamer to leave for Seattle. When, therefore, on Monday morning telegraphic inquiries came from the American side concerning the foreign warships, which, by the way, had carried no flag, ambiguous answers could be made without arousing suspicion. Considerable excitement prevailed in Victoria on account of the innumerable vague rumors of the outbreak of war; the naval station, however, remained perfectly quiet. On Monday morning a cruiser started out in the direction of Port Townsend, and after exchanging numerous signals with Esquimault, continued on her course towards Cape Flattery and the open sea. It will be seen, therefore, that no particular zeal was shown in endeavoring to get at the bottom of the matter.
A battle between the Japanese ships and the forts of Port Townsend had actually taken place. Part of the hostile fleet had escorted the transport steamers to Puget Sound and had there found the naval depots and the fortifications, the arsenal and the docks in the hands of their countrymen, who had also destroyed the second-class battleship _Texas_ lying off Port Orchard by firing at her from the coast forts previously stormed and captured by them. They had surprised Seattle at dawn much in the same way as San Francisco had been surprised, and they at once began to land troops and unload their war materials. On the other hand, an attempt to surprise Port Townsend with an insufficient force had failed. The Americans had had enough sense to prohibit the Japanese from coming too near to the newly armed coast defenses, and the better watch which the little town had been able to keep over the Asiatics had made it difficult for them to assemble a sufficiently large fighting contingent. The work here had to be attended to by the guns, and the enemy had included this factor in their calculations from the beginning.
How thoroughly informed the Japanese were as to every detail of our coast defenses and how well acquainted they were with each separate battery, with its guns as well as with its ammunition, was clearly demonstrated by the new weapon brought into the field in connection with the real attack on the fortifications. Of course Japanese laborers had been employed in erecting the works--they worked for such ridiculously low wages, those Japanese engineers disguised as coolies. With the eight million two hundred thousand dollars squeezed out of Congress in the spring of 1908--in face of the unholy fear on the part of the nation's representatives of a deficit, it had been impossible to get more--two new mortar batteries had been built on the rocky heights of Port Townsend. These batteries, themselves inaccessible to all ships' guns, were in a position to pour down a perpendicular fire on hostile decks and could thus make short work of every armored vessel.
Now the Japanese had already had a very unpleasant experience with the strong coast fortifications of Port Arthur. In the first place, bombarding of this nature was very injurious to the bores of the ships' guns, and secondly, the results on land were for the most part nominal. Not without reason had Togo tried to get at the shore batteries of Port Arthur by indirect fire from Pigeon Bay. But even that, in spite of careful observations taken from the water, had little effect. And even the strongest man-of-war was helpless against the perpendicular fire of the Port Townsend mortar batteries, because it was simply impossible for its guns, with their slight angle of elevation, to reach the forts situated so high above them. And if the road to Seattle, that important base of operations in the North, was not to be perpetually menaced, then Port Townsend must be put out of commission.
But for every weapon a counter-weapon is usually invented, and every new discovery is apt to be counterbalanced by another. The world has never yet been overturned by a new triumph of skill in military technics, because it is at once paralyzed by another equally ingenious. And now, at Port Townsend, very much the same thing happened as on March ninth, 1862. In much the same way that the appearance of the _Merrimac_ had brought destruction to the wooden fleet until she was herself forced to flee before Ericsson's _Monitor_ at Hampton Roads, so now at Port Townsend on May seventh a new weapon was made to stand the crucial test. Only this time we were not the pathfinders of the new era.
While the Japanese cruisers, keeping carefully beyond the line of fire from the forts, sailed on to Seattle, four ships were brought into action against the mortar batteries of Port Townsend which appeared to set at defiance all known rules of ship-building, and which, indestructible as they were, threatened to annihilate all existing systems. They were low vessels which floated on the water like huge tortoises. These mortar-boats, which were destined to astound not only the Americans but the whole world, had been constructed in Japanese shipyards, to which no stranger had ever been admitted. In place of the ordinary level-firing guns found on a modern warship, these uncanny gray things carried 17.7-inch howitzers, a kind of mortar of Japanese construction. There was nothing to be seen above the low deck but a short heavily protected funnel and four little armored domes which contained the sighting telescopes for the guns, the mouths of which lay in the arch of the whaleback deck. Four such vessels had also been constructed for use at San Francisco, but the quick capture of the forts had rendered the mortar-boats unnecessary.
We were constantly being attacked in places where no thought had been given to the defense, and the fortifications we did possess were never shot at from the direction they faced. Our coast defenses were everywhere splendidly protected against level-firing guns, which the Japanese, however, unfortunately refrained from using. With their mortar-boats they attacked our forts in their most vulnerable spot, that is, from above. With the exception of Winfield Scott, the batteries at Port Townsend were the only ones on our western coast which at once construed the appearance of suspicious-looking ships on May seventh as signs of a Japanese attack, and they immediately opened fire on the four Japanese cruisers and on the transport steamers. But before this fire had any effect, the hostile fleet changed its course to the North and the four mortar-boats began their attack. They approached to within two nautical miles and opened fire at once.
What was the use of our gunners aiming at the flat, gray arches of these uncanny ocean-tortoises? The heavy shells splashed into the water all around them, and when one did succeed in hitting one of the boats, it was simply dashed to pieces against the armor-plate, which was several feet thick, or else it glanced off harmlessly like hail dancing off the domed roof of a pavilion. The only targets were the flames which shot incessantly out of the mouths of the hostile guns like out of a funnel-shaped crater.