A crowd of people pressed against the garden palisade. Some of them had evidently climbed it and were in the fortress garden. Men, and women with flowing tawny hair. All of them like Nereid and Entt. A different race from these gray giantess Amazons on the roof-top. They thronged against the garden palisade. Crowds of them surged in all the upper city streets. Crude weapons were in their hands--implements, perhaps, of agriculture. An attack upon the fortress. It seemed so. It had evidently been done quietly--now which was doubtless the quiet time of sleep. But it had been discovered. In the white revealing glare the mob was stricken. The blinded figures in the garden were trying to run back--in a panic trying to escape. They stumbled, fell. Rose and blindly staggered away. I saw one run headlong against a tree trunk. The quiet of the scene--it had been wholly quiet in the darkness a moment before--was broken by their cries of panic. At the palisade the milling throng was struggling to force its way backward against the press of those behind. The city was in a turmoil. A minute of that white glare; then the flare burned out and blank darkness came again. For a time I could see nothing. I heard Arturo’s and Tad’s voices: “Tad, my God--did you see that?” “Yes.” “It’s come--the revolt! But, Tad, we’re not ready. Nothing is ready--” From beneath us, on the dark fortress-roof we were nearing, a cry floated up. A strident, woman’s voice, laughing ironically. CHAPTER XII. THE SATANIC EMPRESS. “Tad! Raise us up! Are you going to land on the fortress? Get us away from here!” We skimmed over the fortress. The gray figures gazed up at us. We swung down the slope of the mound, close over the city streets and roofs. The houses seemed, most of them, from six to ten feet high. I saw, on the level area just beyond the foot of the mound slope, the house upon which Arturo and Tad intended to land--a broad, flat roof. There was a dim light on it; in the glow, a figure of a man stood waiting to receive us. We settled down and came to rest. The roof was oval, fully fifty feet across. It had small flowering shrubs, paths, and a sort of lawn on which we landed--a moldy brown turf. Off at one end, bathed in the dim light, was a pergola with seats and banks of blossoms. The man stood off there. He came hastening forward as we settled. “Fen!” Arturo called to him. “Here we are, Fen! We got him. Did you know they tried to attack the Castle? It was discovered. She saw them--in the white glare.”