CHAPTER I

_The Coming of the Giants_

The first of the giants was reported by a small steamship out of Halifax, bound for Portland. The ship had rounded Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, during the night of March 20th. The sea was stormy; the night overcast with almost a gale from the north. The ship's lookout saw what at first looked like a huge dark rock looming out of the ocean where no rock should have been. It was well inshore from the ship; and though it was only a few miles away, it was not seen clearly.

The ship continued on her course. An hour later, the full moon broke through a rift in the clouds, painting the sullen sea with silver. To the north, where the southern headlands of the land were barely visible, a giant human figure was seen standing in the ocean. Every one on the ship saw it clearly. Incredible as the vision of a fabled sea monster, yet there it was, unmistakable, frightening--it threw the ship's company into a panic of terror.

The thing seemed human. The giant figure of a man. He stood waist-deep in the ocean with the waves beating against his naked chest. How deep the water was, the master of the ship could not say. Ten fathoms perhaps, in the shallows where the giant stood--sixty feet; and his torso towered another sixty above the surface. He stood watching the ship. Then, as it passed, he followed it; wading slowly along to keep abreast of it as doubtless he had been doing for an hour past. In the moonlight, details were plain. A bullet-headed giant. Some said that they could see his features--human of cast, but brutish.

The figure kept its distance, regarding the ship, but making no effort to approach. The vessel turned in a moment off its course, and fled south. The moon was presently obscured. They saw no more of the giant.

This steamship carried wireless. But the master could see no rational way of sending such a wild report. But when hours later, the vessel docked in Portland, the tale was given out.

In these days of skeptical enlightened civilization one cannot claim to have seen a sea serpent and expect anything but laughter. And this was even more incredible. The ship's commander, within a few hours, even doubted the evidence of his own senses. But from the sailors the tale leaked out. And a whole ship's company cannot be insane, or all similarly drunk at once.

The newspapers caught at it, and spread it jocularly until the officials of the freight line cursed their captain and all the crew of the ship for arousing such ridicule.

But still there was some corroboration. From a village near Cape Sable came the report that a giant man had been seen wading in the ocean, seen by a few people during a brief period of moonlight, and then was gone.

Where the figure came from, or where it went, none could say. It was seen just this one night. The tale went around the world and caused a smile, and in a few days was forgotten.

That was the first of the giants.

I was at this time a pilot in the International Mail Service, flying a local plane from Boston up the coast to St. John, daytimes. Up one day with several stops along the route; and back the next day; and then a day off duty. Drake had become father's assistant. They had a laboratory in New York City, and were living now in our Westchester home. Our home on the Maine shore was closed for the winter.

Once a week I went to New York to be with father and Drake. I got there the day the giant was reported. It was of particular interest to me, since it was not far from my flying route.

Father said, "You keep your eyes open, Frank. And look here, if you see anything--don't report it at once. Telephone me."

He was so solemn that I laughed. And Drake was solemn, too.

I demanded, "I say, you two--you don't believe this fool thing, do you?"

"Perhaps," said Drake.

I think that even then they had some vague idea of what it might mean. I thought the yarn was absurd; still less could I have imagined our own connection with it. Never once did I link it with Dianne. It was nearly five years now since that day she had vanished.

I made my next northward flight with no sign of a giant. Nor did I see anything unusual upon the return. In a few days more, like the rest of the world, I had lost interest.

Then one day near the end of March when I was off duty in Boston, another giant was reported. It had been seen the preceding night. A giant man--fifty feet tall, or three hundred, according to the differing, confused versions. The figure had appeared in the ocean, possibly near the mouth of the Penobscot River in northern Maine. Several coast villages and several ships reported seeing the figure, wading north a mile offshore. It was reported almost all the way to the Bay of Fundy. And then it vanished.

This was too obvious for disbelief. No damage had been done. The thing apparently had encountered no ships; it had nowhere come ashore. But the sea was calm this night; the waves of the wading figure had rolled in and pounded the coast to give tangible evidence that the thing was no vision.

The world was more than interested this time. There were near-panics in Boston that day--an exodus of people leaving the city by rail and by airplanes. Several of the local ships from New York to Boston canceled their sailings. People began leaving Cape Cod. There was disorganization, almost a flight from all the cities and villages up the coast.

This was far different from some understood danger. A hurricane, a volcano, an earthquake--people will often face them with a stoicism amounting to foolhardiness, rather than abandon their homes. But this was the unknown, the supernatural. A gruesome horror. Within a day military law was declared all up the Maine coast. Troops were patrolling the area, and the people were being urged to leave.

My chief sent for me at field headquarters. My mate was there; and the two alternate pilots of the route.

"We've discontinued temporarily," he told us. He turned to me as the senior pilot. "Ferrule, the government wants this area patrolled by plane at night. Boston to the New Brunswick border, to connect with Canadian patrol planes. You and Jones want to tackle it?"

We did, of course. We were dispatched that same night--one of six or eight planes flying independently of one another. We left Boston about ten that evening, I and my relief pilot, Bob Jones; and we carried a newly installed code radio with a fellow named Green to operate it.

It is a run of about three hundred miles from Boston, up the crescent curve of coast to the Canadian border. Our orders were to fly at about a thousand feet of altitude, keeping a mile or so offshore. If we saw one of these giants we were to follow it, keep it in sight, and try to determine where it went. We were to report at once by radio. A battleship had already been ordered north; it was to remain in Cape Cod waters, waiting further developments.

The night was calm and starlit. An hour passed. Then two hours. We saw nothing unusual. We were up around the Penobscot now.

Jones, at my elbow, murmured, "One was seen here, Frank. That last one--"

A plane came by, flying south. Another patrol doubtless. We felt that no giant could be ahead of us or this other plane would have seen him; stopped and stayed with him.

The flattened moon came up out of the sea to the east. It was golden at first, laying a broad golden path on the water.

We passed over the many islands. We saw a ship or two--and occasionally a plane.

And then we saw the giant! The actual sight of him, even fortified by what I expected, was a shock of horror.

Jones murmured, "Good God!" He gripped my arm impulsively, but I shook him off.

"Don't do that, you fool!"

"Look at him, Frank!" Bob cried then.

He was no more than a mile or so ahead. He stood at the entrance to a cove. A rocky headland perhaps a hundred feet high was beside him; and he stood with a hand resting against it as though to steady himself. The ocean surface lapped at his knees.

To the right, a mile or so offshore, was the tiny dark blob of an island. Bird's Nest Island! I realized it suddenly. And this was our cove. Our summer home was set in the trees only a few hundred yards back from where the giant was standing.

Green's radio was sending the news. He hunched down, intent at his work. Jones was shaking beside me.

"Lower, Frank! Get down near him!"

We spiraled down. The moonlight was on him, a hundred-foot figure of a man, naked from the waist up. He had pale hair, close cut, on a round head.

"Frank, look at the people!"

A group of tiny black figures was on the cliff, standing in fascinated horror. The giant had not moved; and then with a swift step and a flip of his arm he reached back over the cliff. The tiny figures were scattered. In a patch of moonlit rock two of them lay dead.

We passed only a few hundred feet above the giant. He looked up as though confused or annoyed at the sound of our motors.

Green cautioned me: "Not too close, Frank! If he ever reached--"

That giant hand could have knocked us down into the sea as though we had been a tiny humming insect.

We circled, zoomed up a trifle, and came back. The news had spread. There were two other planes here with us now. A confusion was on shore. We could see, far back, figures and vehicles moving in the moonlight. And lights. And far out to sea, there were the lights of a ship.

We passed again over the giant. Another plane arrived. Four of us, buzzing like insects over the monstrous figure. It turned suddenly and began wading out to sea.

Jones cried: "Look! He's smaller! By George, he is smaller!"

The figure did seem less gigantic. Or perhaps it was the deeper water around him. Then suddenly he sank prone and was swimming. The sea was lashed white with his strokes. Swimming for Bird's Nest Island? It seemed so.

"Lower, Frank! Take us down!"

"Not too close," cautioned Green, for fear he'd stand up again suddenly.

We swept under another plane. The swimming giant flung up an arm; a surge of the water mounted like a geyser in the moonlight. His flashing arms and the black blob of his head were visible. He was halfway to the island. Was he still smaller now?

Then suddenly he dived. The ocean closed over him. The waves he had made rolled away. The surface was calm, unbroken. We waited. Minutes. He did not come up.

The other planes with us swept back and forth, dangerously close to the surface at times. But the giant was gone. We waited half an hour. We crossed over Bird's Nest Island several times. Its tiny rocky peak stood naked in the brilliant moonlight; its trees and shrubbery were deep green; its beach shone clear with the moonlight on it and the calm sea rolling up.

No sign of the giant. And then we were ordered to return to Boston. We turned south.

We were an hour on our southern flight when Green picked up our call. A message for me.

"Your father, Ferrule--he's sent word through headquarters. We're ordered to land at Bennett Field, New York, so you can go to your father and your brother Drake at once." He added: "The exact message--personal, you'll probably understand it--your father says tell you to come at once. He has heard from Dianne."