ck-firing gun in ambush had opened upon him. Swanson smiled at
having been taken unawares. For in San Francisco he often had heard
the roar and rattle of the wireless. But never before had he listened
to an attack like this.

From a tiny white-and-green cottage, squatting among the four giant
masts, came the roar of a forest fire. One could hear the crackle of
the flames, the crash of the falling tree-trunks. The air about the
cottage was torn into threads; beneath the shocks of the electricity
the lawn seemed to heave and tremble. It was like some giant monster,
bound and fettered, struggling to be free. Now it growled sullenly,
now in impotent rage it spat and spluttered, now it lashed about with
crashing, stunning blows. It seemed as though the wooden walls of the
station could not contain it.

From the road Swanson watched, through the open windows of the cottage,
the electric bolts flash and flare and disappear. The thing appealed
to his imagination. Its power, its capabilities fascinated him. In it
he saw a hungry monster reaching out to every corner of the continent
and devouring the news of the world; feeding upon tales of shipwreck
and disaster, lingering over some dainty morsel of scandal, snatching
from ships and cities two thousand miles away the thrice-told tale of a
conflagration, the score of a baseball match, the fall of a cabinet,
the assassination of a king.

In a sudden access of fierceness, as though in an ecstasy over some
fresh horror just received, it shrieked and chortled. And then, as
suddenly as it had broken forth, it sank to silence, and from the end
of the carriage drive again rose, undisturbed, the music of the band.

The musicians were playing to a select audience. On benches around the
band-stand sat a half dozen nurse-maids with knitting in their hands,
the baby-carriages within arm's length. On the turf older children of
the officers were at play, and up and down the paths bareheaded girls,
and matrons, and officers in uniform strolled leisurely. From the
vine-covered cottage of Admiral Preble, set in a garden of flowering
plants and bending palmettos, came the tinkle of tea-cups and the
ripple of laughter, and at a respectful distance, seated on the
dismantled cannon, were marines in khaki and bluejackets in glistening
white.

It was a family group, and had not Swanson recognized among the little
audience others of the passengers from the steamer and natives of the