ons, feeling safe since nothing of the kind
seemed menacing them, were amused that distant America, supposedly
so scientifically modern, should be yielding to superstition worthy
only of the Middle Ages. The accounts from Bermuda were more
difficult to explain. And England, with Bermuda involved, was not
skeptical; as a matter of fact, the British authorities were
astonished. Warships were starting for Bermuda; and that morning of
May 16th, with the passenger lines in New York not sailing for
Bermuda, American warships were ordered to Hamilton. The menace,
whatever it was, would soon be ended.

* * * * *

That was May 16th. Another night passed, and on May 17th the world
rang with startled horror and a growing terror. Panics were
beginning in all the towns and cities of the American seaboard north
of Cape Hatteras. It was no longer a matter of merely seeing
"ghosts." There had been real attacks the previous night.

There had been a variety of incidents, extraordinarily
horrifying--so diverse, so unexpected that they could not have been
guarded against. It was a dark night, an area of low pressure with
leaden storm-clouds over all the Atlantic coastal region, from
Charleston north to the Virginia Capes. A coastal passenger ship off
Hatteras sent out a frantic radio distress call. The apparitions of
men had suddenly been seen in mid-air directly in the ship's course.
The message was incoherent; the vessel's wireless operator was
locked in his room at the transmitter, wildly describing an attack
upon the ships.

The white apparitions--a group of twenty or thirty men--had been
marching in mid-air when the ship sighted them directly over its
bow. In the darkness of the night they were only a hundred feet
ahead when the lookout saw them. In a moment the vessel was under
them, and they began materializing.... The account grew increasingly
incoherent. The figures materialized and fell to the deck, picked
themselves up and began running about the ship, attacking with
little green light-beams. The ship's passengers and crew vanished,
obliterated; annihilated. It seemed that young women among the
passengers were being spared. The ship was melting--the wooden
decks, all the wooden super-structure melting.... A few moments of
fantastic horror, then the distress call died into silence as
doubtless the green light-beams struck the operator's little cabin.

* * * * *