Our losses totaled nearly a hundred and fifty girls. We brought back with us on the platforms but six wounded. I shall never forget that hour we spent searching among the wreckage--those blackened, twisted forms of what had once been men and women. I shall not describe it. Of all the boats which Tao had dispatched on this ill-fated expedition, only one escaped to return with news of the disaster. I was glad now that one, at least, had survived, for the report it would give would, I felt sure, dissuade Tao from making any other similar attempt at invasion. Our broken little army made its way slowly back to the Great City. We went, not in triumph, but indeed with all the aspect of defeat. The people received us in a frenzy of joy and gratitude to the girls for what they had done. This first battle took place, as I have said, just after we four had returned from our tour of the Light Country, and before the recruiting of the young men was fairly under way. To this recruiting it proved an extraordinary stimulus. The girls, having been in successful action, stirred the young men of the nation as probably nothing else could, and all over the country they came forward faster than they could be enrolled. It was two or three days after the battle that Miela came to me one morning with the wounded girl she and I had rescued in the air. "We have a plan--Sela and I--my husband," she said. The girl seemed hardly more than a sweet little child--fifteen or sixteen, perhaps. It gave me a shock now to realize that we had allowed her to go into such a combat. One of her blue-feathered wings was bound in a cloth. Its lower portion, I could tell, had been burned away. "Never will she fly again, my husband," said Miela, "for she is one of those who has sacrificed her wings that we might all be safe from the invader." She then went on to explain that now, while this feeling of gratitude to the girls ran so high among the people, the time seemed propitious for changing the long-hated law regarding their wings. I had not thought of that, but agreed with her wholly. I called the people into the castle gardens that same night. Never had I seen such a gathering. We allowed fully ten thousand to come in; the rest we were forced to send away. Miela made a speech, telling them that in recognition of the girls' services in this war, I had decided to allow them henceforth to keep their wings unmutilated after marriage. We exhibited this little girl, Sela, as one who had given her power of flight, not as a sacrifice on the altar of man's selfishness, but in the service of her country. Then Sela herself made a speech, in her earnest little child voice, pleading for her sisters. When she ended there may have been some unmarried men in our audience who were still against the measure--doubtless there were--but they were afraid or ashamed to let their feeling be known. When the meeting broke up I had ample evidence of the people's wishes upon which to proceed.