But the Japanese were cautious. Their thirty- and
forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a dozen miles
offshore and manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny scout-
boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly the
flashing sea like so many sharks. But, compared with the Energon,
they were leviathans. Compared with them, the Energon was as the
sword of the arch-angel Michael, and they the forerunners of the
hosts of hell.
But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco,
gathered on her hills, never saw. Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved
the air and smote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever
witnessed. The good people of San Francisco saw little and
understood less. They saw only a million and a half tons of brine-
cleaving, thunder-flinging fabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in
ruin to sink into the sea. It was all over in five minutes.
Remained upon the wide expanse of sea only the Energon, rolling white
and toylike on the bar.
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