This achievement brought the time on to nearly nine months from the date of the adventurers' arrival in Izreel, during the first eight months of which information had come in from time to time which left no room to doubt that the savages of the adjoining nations had combined together and were making the most elaborate preparations for a simultaneous attack upon Izreel from all sides. Then the sources of information seemed to suddenly dry up, and no news of any description relative to the movements of the savages could be obtained. The Izreelites were disposed to regard this as a favourable omen, many even asserting their conviction that the savages had quarrelled among themselves, and that attack from them was no longer to be feared; but Dick and Grosvenor took quite another view of the matter. They regarded the cessation of news as ominous in the extreme, and dispatched imperative orders to the frontier for the maintenance of the utmost vigilance, night and day. They also organised strong relays of swift runners, radiating from various points along the shore of the lake to those points where attack might first be expected, in order that intelligence of an invasion might be brought to the capital with the utmost promptitude. The strength of the garrisons in the outlying blockhouses was also doubled, which were put under the command of the most resolute and intelligent captains that could be found, with instructions that each post was to be stubbornly defended until the enemy should threaten to surround it, when it was to be abandoned, and the garrison--or what might remain of it--was to retire inward to the next post, and so on; the various garrisons contesting every inch of ground, cutting up the enemy as severely as possible, and gradually retiring inward toward the lake and Bethalia if they could not maintain their ground. These preparations did not take long to make, since it was merely a matter of marching supplementary troops to the frontier, and the provisioning of the various blockhouses, fortified farms, castles, and strongholds generally; and as the preparations had all been made beforehand, a week sufficed to place the entire nation on the defensive. Still the task was accomplished none too soon, for on the very day succeeding that upon which the preparations for defence were completed, news arrived in Bethalia that large bodies of savages had been seen massing upon various parts of the border, while the next day brought intelligence of attacks upon almost every one of the outlying blockhouses, and of the retirement of their respective garrisons after severe fighting in which heavy loss had been sustained by both sides. The invasion of Izreel had begun, and was being prosecuted with relentless determination and energy. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. VICTORY, TRIUMPH, AND--THE END.