listened unmoved to the roar of dynamite
and the detonations of bursting shells, raised their faces at the
humming of the machine and broke into harsh abrupt cheering. Then they
leaned their rifles against their powerful bodies and unfurled their
flags and waved them in the faces of the half paralyzed people in the
windows. It was a white flag with a curious device sketched in crimson:
a hen in successive stages of evolution. The final phase was an eagle.
The body was modeled after the Prussian emblem of might, but the face,
grim, leering, vengeful, pitiless, was unmistakably that of a woman.
However humor may be lacking in the rest of that grandiose Empire it was
grafted into the Bavarians by Satan himself.

Gisela nodded. "The hens are eagles--all over Germany," she announced
in her full carrying voice. "Word has come through from every quarter."

She flew down the Leopoldstrasse. It was packed with women from the
Feldherrnhalle to the Siegesthor, cheering women, waving their flags,
armed to the teeth. So was the great Park of the Residenz, the
Hofgarten, where the guards were either bound or dead. It took her but a
few moments to fly all over Munich. The narrow streets were deserted,
save for the prostrate policemen bound suddenly from ambush; but in all
the beautiful squares, with their pompous statues, and in all the wider
streets, and out in the wide Theresien Field before the colossal figure
of Bavaria, the women were gathered; relapsing into phlegmatic calm as
soon as she had given her message and passed.

But it was by no means a scene of unbroken dignity and silence. Here and
there groups of men in uniform lay dead, sword or pistol in hand. Once
Gisela flew low and discharged her revolver into the shoulder of a big
officer, half dressed and barely recovered from his wounds, who was
keeping off half a dozen women with magnificent sword play. The women
gave one another first aid, then lifted and pitched him into his house.

There was sniping, of course, from the windows, but the women made a
concerted rush and disposed of the terrified offender as remorselessly
as their own men had punished the desperate civilians of the lands they
had invaded. They had heard their men brag for too many years about
their admirable policy of Schrecklichkeit to forget the lesson in this
fateful hour.

The most exciting scenes and the only ones in which any of the women
were killed were in the vicinity of the garrison. These i