experts as to the crops to plant, and the methods of tillage for the
various locations.

In the cotton lands, where Ethel and her associates were located,
the soil was immediately put to a fuller use. The cotton plants were
thinned and pruned and between the rows quick growing vegetables
were planted. Elsewhere the great pastures were broken up with
captured kerosene-driven gang plows and by dint of hard labor the
sod was quickly reduced to a fit state for intensive cultivation.

The outside work of the professor and his secretary threw Ethel
altogether in the company of Madame Oshima. For this fact she was
very grateful, as her aversion to Komoru, to whom she was nominally
bound, grew more and more a source of worry and fear. So the two
women of Aryan blood worked together in the cotton field side by
side with the Orientals--worked and waited and wondered what was
awing in the surrounding world.

The gasoline wagons came around and refilled the fuel tanks of the
planes. Mechanics inspected the engines carefully and replaced
defective parts. The rice cakes and soyu brought from Japan, had
been replaced by a diet of wheat and maize products and fresh fruits
and vegetables taken from the captured stores and gardens. Such
captured foods, however, had all been inspected by the dieteticians,
and those of doubtful wholesomeness destroyed or placed under lock
and key to be used only as a last resort.

Thus weeks passed. The green things of Japanese planting had poked
their tender shoots through the black American soil. There had been
no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy