With a sudden dizziness I looked on the shambles that now surrounded the opening. I have told something of the outward repulsiveness of the Killers, with their worm-pink skins that were both tough and slimy, but of the interiors of these foul bodies I cannot write. An axe-stroke has no reticence. I thought it was from that nauseous sight that a sudden faintness threatened, and I struggled against it, stepping back, and leaning on the axe, and turning to my companion for her to snare my triumph. She stood very still, her eyes bright and watchful, her mind beginning to question her for the thing she had done--which was, no doubt, outside the experience not only of herself, but of all her kind--but her will meeting it confidently. Then she looked at me, and her thought changed. I made an effort to reassure her that I was uninjured, and was aware that I was falling. I don’t think I was unconscious for long, and I believe that she neither helped nor hindered, but watched quietly beside a phenomenon which was beyond her experience. When my senses returned, she was alert and near, and her mind was quick to reach me. “You can rest while you will. I think your last stroke was enough to still them. You made it work that time!” She always spoke of my body thus, as something separate from myself, as we might praise a friend who carved well with a blunted chisel. “I am sorry that I failed you. The Killer rose on your farther side, and I could not reach it till it had made its throw. I have much yet to learn of the ways of fighting--do you not understand me? Did you not know that your body was broken again?--does it tell you nothing?--look under your right arm.” I looked, and understood. The excitement of the fight, in which my life had literally depended upon the speed and force with which I could strike, and recover, and strike again, and then the utter exhaustion that had followed, and now the dizzy weakness that possessed me--each in turn had left me unaware that a javelin had found its mark. Thrown straight upward, and probably with no great force, in the pushing crowd that gave scant space for free movement, it had struck me in the armpit as the axe was lifted--no depth of wound, but one that bled very freely. It was evident that I must rest for a time at least, and so I lay there, while she sat beside me and watched the empty gap before us, conquering once again the repugnance she felt at touching my body, so that the smooth furred fingers should close the wound, and the soft palm should give its strength to heal me. “I am ashamed,” I thought, “that I should be so incapable from so slight a wound. You regard me as a creature of violence, yet I break down at every conflict, where you come through with a clearer victory. I think I am more an encumbrance than a help, even in such ways as these.”