ounted the hill. Two of them left it,
scouting to see what was happening; the other stayed in the car. One
of the enemy suddenly appeared. His ray struck the car. Its tires,
its woodwork, and fabric and cushions melted and vanished, and the
man within it likewise disappeared. Everything organic vanished
under the assailing green beam. The other two soldiers fired at the
attacker. He was human. He fell as their bullets struck him. Then
others of his fellows came running. The two soldiers were driven
away, but they escaped to tell of the encounter.

The airplane pilot, half an hour later, flew low and fired down into
the group of enemy figures. He thought that one of them fell. He
also thought he was out of range of their beams. But a pencil-point
of the green light thinned and lengthened out. It darted up to his
hundred-and-fifty-foot altitude and caught one of his wings. The
plane fell disabled into the bay near the city docks, but the pilot
swam safely ashore.

I need not detail the confusion and panic of the government
officials who were gathered here in the room where Don, Jane and I
stood watching and listening to the excitement of the incoming
reports. For quiet little Bermuda the unprecedented situation was
doubly frightening. An attack would have to be made upon the
invaders. There were only fifty of the enemy; the soldiers and the
police could in a few hours be mobilized to rush them and kill them
all.

But could that be done? The thing had so many weird aspects, the
invaders still seemed so much in the nature of the supernatural,
that Mr. Dorrance advised caution. The enemy was now--this was about
ten o'clock in the evening--quietly gathered in the little field on
the ridge-top. They seemed, with their first attack over, no longer
offensive. But, if assailed, who could say what they would do?

* * * * *

And a thousand unprecedented things to do were pressing upon the
harassed officials. Panic-stricken crowds now surged out of all
control in the Hamilton streets. Refugees were coming in, homeless,
needing care. The soldiers and the police were scattered throughout
the islands, without orders of what to do to meet these new
conditions.

And new, ever more frightening reports poured in. The telephone
service, which links as a local call nearly every house throughout
the islands, was flooded with frantic activity. From nearly every
parish came reports of half-materialized gh