How can one trace a sequence through that wild confusion which followed? Even while we compelled our prisoners on pain of death to retire their battalions from the Palace, we saw the Russian seamen breaking ranks. The captured officers yelled at them in vain, we could gain nothing by killing our hostages, as the seamen rushed on us brandishing their rifles, hundreds to one against our scattered groups. No reach of sword could give us a fighting chance against such bludgeons as the seamen used, nor had we time to rally round the Queen. Taken flank, front, and rear, each for himself, we measured our short blades against the sledgehammer blows, and some of us won back to the steps of the dais--and some to the ranks of the Guard beyond the Gates of Death. Comparing one with another the memories of that last tremendous struggle for existence, some of us have recalled a series of explosions which made the pavement reel beneath our feet, and more than one of the great onyx columns crash down in ruin on the attacking force. The timbering of the golden dome was all aflame above us littering red-hot wreckage through the smoke. It was a beam of this burning timber which slew Dymoke, and we heard him calling on Sydney before he died. Some of us also have remembrance that with noble courtesy the disarmed officers of the General Staff were attempting to save us from their men. But, for the writer of this history, one recollection only is engraved forever upon a sorely bewildered brain. It is the picture of our Lady standing before her throne. All round her upon the steps of the dais, the swords of her Guardsmen whispered and sang, red gleaming blades, thrusting or slashing, resonant against dark steel of whistling rifles. Above her the emblazoned Guidon drooped in the coiling vapours, at her feet lay Lancaster, his dead face wonderful in its perfect rest. Her hands were on the hilt of her sword, the cloak was drawn about her, ruddy gold and red streamed her hair in the fierce light. Her face was lifted in prayer, radiant with an unearthly beauty, and fearless, and at peace. And the fight raged on as though there never could be an end. How strange the end was! One saw a Russian seaman, his bronzed face glowing with fury, his rifle whirling for the blow--then somehow that rifle was blown to pieces in mid-air; and the bandolier across the man's shoulder changed to a bolt of lightning; and his body dismembered, disrupted, gone. Then one looked out across the hall to find it empty, save for the group of Russian officers--while the floor seemed a sea of blood. A voice cried, "Margaret! Margaret!" We saw a single man, a great, grim, bloodstained man, looming gigantic in the flame-light, come running towards the dais, his arms stretched out; and in a reeling, heaving vault of blood and flame, John Brand lifting the Queen in his arms. Margaret was saved! XXIII PRISONER OF LOVE