The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-25


 cept with hundreds.
 Even then the flagship off the coast was sputtering code into the night. It was long code, but its meaning was short 1t meant 'sNowP'
 The mine sweepers hauled their gear and came out. Fourteen had gone in Those that came out were nine.
 Before they had well begun to move the beach was white with ships boats, and 800 bluejackets and marines set foot on the mainland of the United States.
 With gharpened knives in ] their sheaths, and loaded carbines and ban doleers filled with cartridges, and en- trenching tools and provisions, each man of that first force presented the highest attainable unit efficiency for war.
 The boats were scarcely off the beach to return to the ships before 800 of these units were trotting through the upland, throwing out advancing par ties and making hasty trenches from which in moment there looked the greyhound muzzles of machine guns.
 On the shore the strand party was sinking sand anchors and rigging der rlcks. Others were setting together the five and one-half foot sections of joint ed hollow masts for the wireless. When the boats beached again, with more men, two forty foot masts reach ed into the night, and hand power gen orators were making the antennae pulse with their mysterious life.
 Launches came in now, dragging wide, fiat bottorned pontoons and swinging them on to shore and speed ing back for more. Men snatched at them and held them in the surf and ran their mooring up the beach, while oth- CTS carried out hedges and boat an choTs from all sides to make them lie steady in the ground swell
 The beach s1one white as day all at once. The destroyers had steamed in and were giving their men aid with their scare nights.
 In swung more pontoons. Broadside to broadside, kedged and anchored out, they were moored out into t4v sea at half dozen parts of the beach. Laid far enough apart that they should not 1 touch, however hard the swell might 1 strive to grind them together, they ] formed floating piers reaching beyond the farthest outer line of surf, From pontoon to pontoons ran gangplanks | lashed fast.
 Three hours had passed. Three times ] the ships boats had made the trip be- tween warships and shore-thirty naval service cutters, each carrying thirty men, Twenty-seven hundred sailors, marines and soldiers were hold ing the Rhode Island coast.
 From the trenches of the advance party a wireless spoke to the cruiser bearing the senior officer. Motor scouts reported in front, on road, three thousand yards in. Will fire rocket indicating direction
 The rocket burst For a minute it made all that part of the black country Il stand out as under lightning. "Crash!s' Nsafd the ship. Over the bluejackets swept the shells and burst.
 "Crashr" said another ship.
 Apparently effective,'' said the wire less again Shall send patrols for ward" And again it spoke, in half an hour: Enemy driven back. Our l patrols hold road. Barb wire entangle- ments completed. Scouts in Report 1 land clear, except for enemy cavalry l ln force inland out of range"
 CHAPTER VI.
 'fVNhere Is Our Arny2"
 as4A IF OWr' said the cruisers wire IE MI less, speaking once more into the sea- Silent, formIess,
 black, four vast ships, long and twice as tall as the cruisers, came 1 slowly in among them.
 These were the transports, sealed that not a thread of light should shine from them to betray them to the thing that all the feet dreaded more than anything e1se-the underwater lance of a submarines torpedo.
 Under water the submarine is always blind, even when the brightest light of the noon day sun shines vertically into the ocean. It can see only with it's perfscope eye above the surface.
 At night the periscope cannot see. Then the submarine ceases to be use full as a submarine It can act still, but only on the surface, like any other torpedo boat.
 Two score destroyers, each of thirty knots, each armed with from four to ten three-inch guns and rapid frers circled around the transports. Twice as swift as the surface speed of the swiftest submarine, armed overwhe1m ing1y, they could defy surface attack.
 American submarines now in com mission do not carry more than one three-inch rapid fire gun. It is set in 2 water tight compartment, from whict it is elevated when the vessel is on tho surface. Armaments of destroyers are Ammen class, five three-inch rapid frt 30 caliber rifles; A1wyn class, four four inch rapid fire 50 caliber rifles; Bain bridge class, two three-inch rifles ana five sH-pounders rapid f1re.]
 They hemmed the darkened troop ships round with a great circle o. searchlights, all thrown outward, tha served the double purpose of il1umipat ing the ocean for miles and of .blindins any who tried to approach. No human ave looking into that glare could hay, seen the transports, even if the nigh had not shrouded them. | (To Be Continued.) The Prince of Wales celebrated his s5+ FyiI-thfIav at the front