CHAPTER XXXI

_Togaro Strikes_

Father sat that night in the War Department at Washington. He had been in constant consultation with the authorities, for he, more than any one in the world, could explain what manner of people were these Togarites. Yet even father knew very little.

"We can't stand up against warfare like this!" exclaimed the war secretary.

There were orders given that night that under no circumstances were the Togarites to be attacked. Reprisal by the enemy was too easy--too efficacious.

Additional warnings to the public were issued. The enemy was moving slowly southward--the territory in advance of them was ordered abandoned. No need to enforce such orders! A wave of refugees rolled back, a hundred miles in advance of the slow-moving giant lines.

Indescribable scenes of confusion and terror marked those days toward the close of May. The Togarites moved largely at night; every dawn found them farther south. They crossed Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The 1st of June found their outposts well into Connecticut, following the north shore of Long Island Sound. New Haven was trampled by a single giant, on June 1--the city wrecked in an hour.

There were changes now in the enemy tactics. In Maine they had been careful not to demolish the cities unduly. Their own people were settling there. But now, farther south, only the active warring giants advanced. They laid everything waste beneath their monstrous tread. An area a hundred miles wide had been wholly abandoned days before. The advancing giants waded into it; stamping, kicking--firing it by night with great torches. A blackened, wrecked swath of country stretched down from Maine.

The giants were larger now. As their territory expanded they took a larger size. It was systematically done. Each seemed to have his post--a few miles over which he paced back and forth--with one of his fellows coming south at intervals to relieve him. And the reliefs were always larger--with more miles of country to pace. By June 1 it was estimated that they stood some five hundred feet tall.

On June 1 they had reached Long Island Sound barely a hundred miles from New York City, where millions of people, in all the chaos, were still unable to get away. Giants had already crossed the Hudson. One of them stood in the river and lunged against Bear Mountain Bridge until he tore it loose.

For all that the United States and Canada did not dare attack, there were frantic preparations for war. The battle planes were made ready. The Canadians were massed on the border--and a great fleet of American planes assembled in New Jersey. Artillery units were mobilized. Infantry would be useless. It was used now to aid the flight of the civilian population. The evacuated areas in advance of the giants were always under martial law, patrolled by soldiers who retreated slowly before the oncoming enemy.

The forts of the Highlands near the Hook--entrance to the port of New York--were ready to do what they could; and the forts at Wadsworth, on Staten Island, were ready.

The Atlantic battle-fleet was massed in the Chesapeake. The Pacific fleet was hastening through the Panama Canal.

Resistance seemed so useless! By virtue of size alone, this enemy was irresistible. Monstrous, terrible weapon of size! No one, contemplating it, could even have approximated the terror of the reality.

Yet it seemed horrible to do nothing. Father describes innumerable conferences in Washington, where the harassed government strove to plan what might be done. Nor was our government alone. The world was at stake. Every foreign government was frightened, offering help and advice.

Help was coming. Transport planes, bringing volunteers from Britain, were daily arriving. They flew the far-south route--landed in the Carolinas, and were rushed North.

A united, civilized earth opposed this enemy of giants. But to realize the desperate futility of it, one had only to envisage it from the giant viewpoint. A little, miniature world, like an anthill, outraged. Why, a single giant--Togaro alone--if he made himself large enough, could destroy this anthill activity!

Father recalls how our war secretary gripped him. "But what does he want, Ferrule? This Togaro--conquer us? God, man, we can't yield up our whole country! Our whole earth! Does he want to exterminate us? Why doesn't he say something, communicate with us, make demands--an ultimatum--terms for surrender--something! Anything, but not this gruesome silence!"

Father was silent. But to him came the wistful thought of Drake, Dianne and me. He wondered where we were--if only we would come back to him! If we had the drugs, and brought them now, the earth might be saved.

Warfare, with both sides using the drugs, would be terrible indeed. It might, probably would, destroy the world of its own momentum. Then there came to father with a flash of divination, the true aspect of what might happen if our earth forces had the drug. Togaro's giants never wore the drug-belts. Father could guess why. It was a weapon too powerful, so that Togaro did not dare entrust it now even to his own men. One, for instance, might be wounded, and in a frenzy take too much of the drug and run amuck, destroying all his fellows.

But there was another reason. A giant had already been killed. His body was floating in the ocean off Boston. Other giants might be killed. The Earth forces might get possession of the drugs.

Father wondered where the main drug supply was kept. Probably, he concluded, it was all upon Togaro's person. One man, controlling everything.

Father divined what might happen if the earth forces had the drugs. A general attack by our planes, our armies and navies, could be made. It might take the giants by surprise. A thousand of them--there seemed only that many--might be overcome. If Togaro could be separated from them so that they could be kept from growing larger, the earth-giants might fight with Togaro the combat of size.

Wild and desperate thoughts these. But father had them; and he prayed wistfully that Drake and I might come and bring with us the drug that would offer this last desperate hope.

This was the night of June 1 and 2. The dawn of the 2nd brought a new menace. In the ocean, far off at the curving eastern horizon beyond Sandy Hook, the head and shoulders of a giant loomed into the sky. No, not a giant, this--a titan. A monstrous, titanic thing in human form. Togaro! No one had seem him arrive. He swam down from Cape Cod, doubtless, in the darkness just before dawn, expanding as he swam.

And now he stood some twenty miles offshore. A mountain in the shape of a man off there. To observers at the sea-level he was standing beneath the curve of the horizon. And his torso loomed mountainous into the sky. A thousand feet? A mile? There are no eye-witnesses who can agree.

He stood a moment, and then he waded toward the Hook, and spoke. It was a rumble like distant thunder. It was heard all up and down the coast. Words blurred--but he said them over slowly. And they were heard, and then distinguished.

"I will talk now. I will tell you what to do."

The news was flashed to Washington. In the fort at Sandy Hook the commander of some gun-crew lost his wits and fired a shot. It struck Togaro in the shoulder. He stood with surprise and anger. Then he stooped and reached fumblingly into the ocean. He plucked up a dripping mass of rock and heaved it--a rock huge as the fort. It fell upon the Hook; the fortifications were buried beneath it.

There is no one who can tell with any coherency what happened in those next minutes. No one in New York could have seen more than the feet and towering legs of the infuriated titan as he bounded with splashing steps up the harbor. He wrecked the forts on Staten Island. He splashed into the upper bay and leaned over lower Manhattan. The Woolworth Building--a little toy reaching to his knees. The higher domes newly built along the Battery--they may have towered to the height of his thighs. He kicked at them. The falling masonry and steel fell into a litter at his shoe-tops--crashed and fell with what to him was a tiny clatter and a cloud of dust and smoke surging to his waist. He waded into it, for only a minute. Inconceivable wreckage!

He turned and strode back. A few of his leaps carried him down the harbor, churning up the Narrows, splashing through the Lower Bay, wading again into the ocean. The dawn was still behind him as he stood there. And again his roaring voice sounded:

"That will teach you not to attack me. Now I will tell you what to do!"

The incredible, inconceivable power of size!

An hour passed. Father was routed from his bed. In the War Department he found a throng of officials. The representatives of a dozen foreign governments were there. A turmoil with no attempt at any rational conference. The building rang with shouts:

"We must yield! This is madness. Hopeless."

A single enemy, armed only with the weapon of size, yet it was hopeless for all the world to try to fight him!

Togaro was still standing under the morning sky. His words were heard in New York, and flashed by wire to Washington.

"I command that you leave the United States. Take your people out of it as quickly as possible. I will not interfere with your retreat. I command you to sail the warships of your world--anchor them off the coast of Maine so that I may sink them."

He gave a score of details. He spoke for what was perhaps ten minutes. He ended:

"If you yield, send a plane now as a signal. Let it come near me--so that I may catch it in my hand. I will not kill its pilot."

There was a sudden heavy silence in that War Department room when the message came. Then some one said:

"Shall we yield?"

It meant giving over the whole world to this tyrant. Every man in the room knew it. And would it help? The wreckage at Lower Manhattan--those ten minutes just now at dawn--would yielding up the world spare other scenes like that? Or would this monster be insatiable?

"Shall we yield?"

The white-faced men whispered it to each other. The fate of their whole world, now in this breathless moment to hang upon their hasty, frightened decision.

They were spared the necessity of answering. A secretary burst in from the adjacent corridor.

"Ferrule! Dr. Ferrule!"

A message for father! A telephone from Mount Vernon in the northern suburbs of New York City, close now to the enemy lines.

Drake Ferrule had been found! He and a strange girl named Ahlma! They were safe. A plane had been sent to them, and they were coming to Washington.

And the message for father, from Drake:

"Don't yield! We're coming with the drugs."

Under the strain of it, the war secretary broke. He burst into an hysterical laugh. "Don't yield! Why, of course we won't yield! Attack them now--we're ready!"

The orders went out. Father tried to stop it. "Wait! Get the drugs first!"

But in the pandemonium around him he was unheeded. The attack had long been planned. The war planes were ready, massed in all the Jersey airports. The artillery units were ready. The roads and the railways of New Jersey were open and ready for swift transportation.

An attack upon the Togarite lines where they crossed, west of the Hudson, at the New Jersey border!

And off in the ocean beyond Sandy Hook, the titanic figure of Togaro stood waiting for his answer. But now, behind him, farther out and to the north, other huge figures were swimming! He did not at first see them. Two figures--expanding as they swam, coming to attack him! Then one of them stood on the ocean bottom; stood upright, towering into the sky. A figure almost as huge as Togaro.

The figure of a girl! A girl in a golden robe!