me of our poor country," said the Postmaster,
shaking the operator's hand, "I thank you with all my heart; you have
done a brave deed."

Just at the time when the operator sent off his telegram to Sacramento,
a little, yellow, narrow-eyed fellow, lying in a ditch many miles
inland, far to the east of San Francisco, connected his Morse apparatus
with the San Francisco-Sacramento telegraph-wire, and intercepted the
following message: "Chief of Police, Sacramento.--San Francisco attacked
by Japanese fleet this morning; whole city in hands of Japanese army.
Resistance impossible, as attack took place in thick fog before dawn.
Help imperative."

The little yellow man smiled contentedly, tore off the strip, and handed
it to the officer standing near him. The latter drew a deep breath and
said: "Thank Heaven, that's settled."

At the time of the occupation of the Post Office building, the Japanese
outposts had already spun their fine, almost invisible silver threads
around all the telegraph-wires far inland and thus cut off all
telegraphic communication with the east. The telegram just quoted
therefore served only to tell the Japanese outposts of the overwhelming
success of the Japanese arms at the Golden Gate.

But how had all this been accomplished? The enemy could not possibly
have depended on the fog from the outset. Nevertheless an unusual
barometrical depression had brought in its train several days of
disagreeable, stormy weather. The Japanese had been fully prepared for a
battle with the San Francisco forts and with the few warships stationed
in the harbor. The fact that they found such a strong ally in the fog
was beyond all their hopes and strategical calculations.

When the sun sank in the waves of the Pacific on the sixth of May, every
Japanese had his orders for the next few hours, and the five thousand
men whose part it was to attend to the work to be accomplished in San
Francisco on the morning of the seventh, disappeared silently into the
subterranean caves and cellars of the Chinese quarter, to fetch their
weapons and be ready for action soon after midnight.

_Chapter VIII_

IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH

It was thought that the earthquake had done away forever with the
underground labyrinth of the Chinese quarter--those thousands of pens
inhabited by creatures that shunned the light of day, those mole-holes
which served as headquarters for a subterranean agitation, the
mysterious methods of whi