It struck one of them fairly on the outstretched head, and down it came, a bright yellow snake-like form, turning head-under-heels as it came--or under tail, to be literal--and falling in the open gap, at which there rose a chorus of such consternation from the unseen Killers beneath us, that it was evident that to them a lizard must be a very dreaded or a very sacred thing. “Two each,” she laughed, as she caught the still restless portions of the living cords on an arrow’s point, and threw them back into the gap beneath us. “Did you notice that they became almost harmless after I had struck one of the lizards, and the others bolted? I believe it was their minds that guided them to attack us. It was to reach them, if the need came, that I first tried the javelins, but I dare not tell you, nor let the thought make growth in my own mind, lest they should know it. I fear them, but I do not fear the Killers at all.” And just then the Killers came. I think the falling of the lizard must have produced a confusion that delayed their attack, but that this was succeeded by such a tide of fury as swept away the natural cowardice that underlay their ferocity, and caused them to forget the caution with which they had approached us previously. They came leaping upward, with their hands on the edge of the gap, and the first fell back with a javelin in the throat, and a second I knocked back with a sidesweep of the axe, and from the third I sliced off the sucker at its root, and stopped his whistling. But the crowd pushed up, and flung him sprawling outward. They had no cords--perhaps they thought them useless after the way we returned the four they sent us; perhaps they would have been too dangerous to themselves in that crowded rush--and they had little time or space to use their javelins before the axe was on them. I struck, and struck, with steady sweeping strokes, at the pushing crowd that rose against me, the tough skins denting to the blade, and bursting as they felt the pressure behind them. And always, if they rose too fast, or one should dodge my stroke, a javelin found it, from where my comrade had stepped back to the wall to reach them down as she needed them. Once I thought I had failed, as the pressure spued up two or three at once, too quickly for the axe to take them, but her mind reached me serenely. “Keep the others down--and leave these to me,” and was vaguely conscious that she was avoiding their weapons with a cool celerity, while her own bore them her message that their hours were over. And then amid an up-rush of damaged bodies which he was using for his own protection I saw the red-brown malignant head of one of the archers, and struck with all my strength a straight-down cleaving blow, and was conscious that the attack had collapsed before me, and the gap was empty.