PART THREE.

In the Clutch of the War-God

The tale of the ORIENT’S invasion of the Occident, as chronicled in the humaniculture society’s “Notes on the twentieth century”

By Milo Hastings

Synopsis:  In the year of 1958, Ethel Calvert, a daughter of an American grain-merchant, residing in Japan, because of her father’s death in an anti-foreign riot, is forced to take refuge, with Madame Oshima, the French wife of a Japanese scientist.  She becomes accustomed to the land and mode of living followed by the Japanese, and is finally persuaded to adopt the costume of the land of her exile.  War is declared between Japan and the United States, and Professor Oshima, and Komoru, his Secretary, together with Madame Oshima and Ethel Calvert, sail for the United States in a Japanese war vessel.  When near the Pacific Coast, the many men and women who have been passengers on the vessel, leave the ship by means of aeroplanes, and sail eastwardly toward Texas, where they establish plantations and conduct a desultory warfare by aeroplanes with United States troops.  While working in the fields Ethel discovers a young American in concealment.  He warns her to keep silent, and immediately runs away.

In a few minutes Ethel had caught up with the man who, more cautiously, ran before her.  Checking her speed, she followed silently.

For a half-mile she pursued him thus.  He came to the end of the field and dodged into the thicket of bushes that lined the fence row.  He moved more slowly now, and she followed by sound rather than by sight.  At length they came to where a brook ran at right angles to the fence row.  The man stopped and crawled under the barbed-wire fence and came out on the turnpike that ran alongside.

Ethel, peering out from the bushes, saw him walk boldly forward and stand upon the end of the stone culvert that conducted the brook beneath the roadway.  For a moment only he remained so, and then clambered quickly down at the end of the arch and disappeared in the darkness beneath.  She heard a foot splash in the water, and then all was quiet save the gurgle of the stream.

Climbing over the fence, she top ran forward upon the culvert.  She listened and looked toward either end, resolved to call to him if he emerged.

As she stood waiting she saw the yellow signal light rise in spirals higher and higher and then circle slowly in one location.  A few minutes later the dim tail lights of the planes came up out of the horizon and flew towards the signal light.

After a half-hour of waiting, she boldly resolved to enter the hiding place of the man she had followed.

Cautiously feeling her way, she clambered down over the end of the culvert and peered into its black archway.