We could not even retard their advance, let alone stop it. Here were no suffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of their full vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor had conjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailed outside the glass cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that to reach them and hack at them we had to step within range of their terrific clutches. The Zyobites fought with the valor of despair added to their inherent noble bravery. Man after man closed with the monstrous, armored Things--only to be seized and crushed by the weaving tentacles. Occasionally a terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the glass helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their water-hose behind them, came on with the steadiness of a machine. * * * * * Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace. As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and went with us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters. A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer mass and ferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments. Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stone benches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to us in silence by the noncombatants. Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She had dragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get some fighter's attention and give it to him. I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, a ten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through the distorting curve of the glass. Disregarding the clutching tentacles entirely, I swung the bar against the helmet. It cracked. I swung again and it fell in fragments, spilling the gallons of water it had contained. The tentacles wound vengefully around me, but in a few seconds they relaxed as the thing gasped out its life in the air. * * * * * I turned to repeat the process on another if I could, and found myself facing the Queen. Her head was held bravely high, though the violet of her eyes had gone almost black with fear and repulsion of the terrible things we fought. "Aga!" I cried. "Why art thou here! Go back to the palace at once!" "I came to fight beside thee," she answered composedly, though her delicate lips quivered. "All is lost, it seems. So shall I die beside thee." I started to reply, to urge her again to seek the safety of the palace. But by now the deadly advance of the tentacled demons had begun once more. Fighting vainly, the population of Zyobor was swept into the palace grounds, then into the building itself.