The scene was clear in the yellow moon-glow. The throng of girls at the staircase bottom, were gathering their leaders, preparing again to mount. The tense guards on top seemed confused, not knowing how to deal with this unarmed attack. On the castle balcony, at the head of the steep metal stairway, a few other guards were standing. And on the rooftop, I could make out the doddering figures of old men, gazing down in confused terror. There was, momentarily, a pause over the scene: a silence, expectant. But abruptly the hush was broken by a shrill, electrical whine. It rose in pitch to a scream, a siren from the castle battlements. It screamed for a moment, then abruptly was stilled. I wondered what it meant. The crowd was stricken breathless. But for an instant only. Then it broke into a roar of shouting. The king had died! I did not know it at the time, but I suspected it. On the rooftop, the old men were waving their arms; one of them seemed trying to talk to the throng. But his voice was lost in the din. As though the siren had been a signal, the girls began swarming up the staircase, unarmed girls—unarmed save for the shining armor of their virginity and the desperation of their purpose. I stood watching; it was necessary for me to know with what arms the guards were equipped. Some fifty young men, they stood in a group at the head of the staircase. The girls came up in a throng. I saw then that each of the guards seemed armed only with a long, curved knife, like a scimitar, incased in a black metal sheath. Some drew these knives, waved the naked blades. But the girls were beyond intimidation. They came surging—a hundred of them in the first rank, with other hundreds pressing from below. The guards met them halfway down, a confusion of white figures with the black forms of the guards struggling in their midst. A man with twenty girls around him. He did not want to use his naked sword. It was torn from him, the girls tearing at him savagely. He went down; the white forms swept over him. A girl who had secured his sword waved it with shrill cries. Another guard, more desperate, was using his sheathed weapon as a club. He had cleared a space around him. A girl leaped; the club struck her head. She fell limp. But he too, was soon overwhelmed. The girls presently were near the staircase top; the guards remaining there were standing now, all with naked swords. I could not doubt but that they would be driven to use them. The girls momentarily had paused, a dozen steps below them. Many now were armed with swords they had taken. The blades were waving. A score of girls with the swords, pushed their way to the upper rank, gathered for concerted, frenzied action. Then, with a rush, started up the empty intervening steps.