When the train reached a junction after about an hour and a half’s run, there was considerable delay while a large party of Auxiliary Cadets searched the train, and eventually arrested a police sergeant, whom they removed after a desperate struggle to a waiting motor. Blake was reading at the time, and did not think anything was wrong until he saw the sergeant being dragged out of the station. It then occurred to him that, though he thought he knew every Cadet in the west by sight, yet he failed to recognise any of the search-party. However, it was useless to interfere, as he was alone and unarmed. Blake stayed at a hotel near Stephen’s Green, and for the first part of the night, so silent and empty were the streets, that Dublin might have been a city of the dead. However, about 2 A.M., a miniature battle broke out in some near quarter, and for hours rifle-fire and the explosions of bombs continued, varied at times by bursts of machine-gun fire. The following morning after breakfast he set out to see a high official in the Castle, a friend of his father’s, and also to report at the R.I.C. Headquarters there. While walking along Grafton Street shots suddenly rang out at each end, and at once the crowd tried to escape down several by-streets, only to be held up by the Cadets at every point; and it was not until two hours afterwards, when the Cadets had satisfied themselves that the men they wanted were not there, that Blake was free to proceed to the Castle. The streets appeared much the same as usual, but the Castle was greatly changed from peace times. The entrance gates were heavily barred; barbed wire, steel shutters, and sandbags in evidence everywhere. Outside, a strong party of Dublin Metropolitan Police and Military Foot Police. Inside, a strong guard of infantry in steel helmets, while a tank and two armoured cars were standing by ready to go into action. As nobody was allowed to enter the Castle without a pass, Blake had to get a friend from the headquarters of the R.I.C. to identify him before he could gain admission, and he learnt from his friend that the party of Auxiliaries he had seen the previous day arresting the police sergeant at the junction were in reality a flying column of Volunteers, who had managed to smuggle the Cadets’ uniforms into the country from England. Blake found that most of the officials in the Castle were virtually prisoners there, and in order to keep their figures down had improvised a gravel tennis-court and also a squash racket-court.