Bthuh, the wife of Poblath, lady in waiting to the princess, was standing over him with an electric candle in her hand. “Myles, Myles,” she cried, “I am glad to see you again, but make haste, arise. An orderly is at the door with a message.” Cabot jumped to his feet and went to the door. The Cupian soldier standing there informed him that Colonel Wotsn desired his presence as soon as convenient. Then the man withdrew, and Cabot returned to the room. The three dials of the clock on the wall showed that the time was two hundred and sixty o’clock, not quite daybreak. “Is Lilla up?” he asked. “No,” Bthuh replied. “She still sleeps.” “Then do not disturb her,” he said. “She needs the rest.” So, dismissing Bthuh, he shaved, bathed, and donned a fresh toga. Then, as the princess had not yet appeared, he penciled a hasty note for her, and went to have breakfast with the Colonel. Nan-nan, the priest, was also there. Wotsn announced that during the night the city had fallen completely into their hands, and that the loyal army from the north was about to enter it at daybreak, but that the Formian air fleet was already on its way northward from Wautoosa to give battle. He wished Cabot to be on hand to see these developments. As the first pink light from the invisible sun diffused through the silver clouds of the eastern sky, these three and their attendants charged up on the highest terrace of the palace. There was the hum of many motors in the air. The early morning light disclosed to the southward the long serried ranks of the imperial air navy of the ant empire, while from the north came the whistling bees and their Cupian allies. It was a truly impressive sight. The two forces would meet for battle squarely over the city. The outcome was in the hands of the gods. And then Cabot saw what filled his heart with intense joy and security. Several kerkools, manned by Cupian soldiers, drove in from the north and halted beside the palace. And each kerkool bore the familiar electrical machinery designed by Cabot and Prince Toron, the machinery which propagated that peculiar ray which was capable of silencing the ignition of any airplane motor—except, of course, the trophil engines with which the Cupian planes were equipped. “Let them come!” Cabot exulted. “For, look, there is the means to bring every black flyer to the dust.” But Nan-nan, the priest, shook his head sadly. “That device has passed its usefulness,” he declared, “for every Formian plane now has a trophil engine the same as ours. If your fleet relies on any assistance from these machines they are lost.” “How do you know this?” Cabot asked him. To which the priest replied, as was his wont: “The holy father knows everything.” “Then we are indeed lost,” added Lilla, who had just joined them, “for look—the force from the south outnumbers that from the north, and the Formians are the more experienced flyers, as we well know.”