At midnight Brand's yacht escorted Margaret to her Palace, and neither the Queen nor her servant flinched from the instant necessities of civil war. Indeed, the Duke of Ulster had scarcely reached his office in Downing Street when, like a meteor, the _Mary Rose_ swept down out of space and discharged a body of sailors and guardsmen upon the roof of the Chancellory. The building was ransacked from garrets to basement, the safe was broached, its contents secured, and nobody knows to this day how the Chancellor managed to escape. Brand's people were in the house, and the yacht, with open gangways, lay helpless upon the roof when three electrical aerial destroyers of the Fleet pounced down to effect her capture. She sounded the recall, and gained some precious moments in parley, but still escape was impossible, for the destroyers had every weapon trained at point-blank range. The last men gained their quarters on board, the port clanged home, a bell sounded, and then in haste the destroyers opened fire. To their amazement and horror they saw the yacht for an instant poise in the moonlight, then change as they supposed into a blur of quivering vapour and totally disappear, leaving the shell-struck roof a mass of flames. Brand said afterwards that guardsmen and sailors alike were seasick as she rose, circled round Buckingham Palace, then flashed down on Holloway Prison. "It was a near thing," he confessed, "and I almost killed one of my engineers. His heart stopped beating and the surgeon had some trouble in pulling him round." There was panic in the courtyard at Holloway, sharp explosions rang out here and there, while some cased ammunition blew the store room to pieces, raining showers of bricks into the courtyard. Despite all resistance, two prisoners were taken from the cells, and like a steel projectile, the yacht flashed homeward, delivering Sydney and Browne upon one of the Palace towers. Brand left the yacht, which drove away some destroyers and poised in the high air on guard. Until dawn, the master was at work in an office set apart for him on the frontage overlooking the Mall. Since midnight the Palace had been ringing with the noise of preparation for war. A single breath from great artillery would sweep the fairy-fragile walls into white dust, but two hundred gentlemen of the Guard thought otherwise. In the dead of night, transport wagons were taken from the royal garage, and under escort entered the silent metropolis. Warehouses were forced, weapons, provisions and forage were taken in the Queen's name, and the supplies brought back to the Palace. There the tanks were filled, the non-combatants discharged. The outward-facing windows were barricaded to resist musketry, the re-entrants loopholed for machine carbines, the salients turned into bastions commanding the curtains, and each door guarded with a small earthwork.