not avail herself of the savage jaws of these wolves, akin as they
were to half her nature. She vouchsafed to them nor look nor sign;
but Christian, on an impulse to assure himself that she should not
escape him, caught and held the back-flung edge of her furs,
running still.

She turned like a flash with a beastly snarl, teeth and eyes
gleaming again. Her axe shone, on the upstroke, on the downstroke,
as she hacked at his hand. She had lopped it off at the wrist, but
that he parried with the bear-spear. Even then, she shore through
the shaft and shattered the bones of the hand at the same blow, so
that he loosed perforce.

Then again they raced on as before, Christian not losing a pace,
though his left hand swung useless, bleeding and broken.

The snarl, indubitable, though modified from a woman's organs, the
vicious fury revealed in teeth and eyes, the sharp arrogant pain
of her maiming blow, caught away Christian's heed of the beasts
behind, by striking into him close vivid realisation of the
infinitely greater danger that ran before him in that deadly
Thing.

When he bethought him to look behind, lo! the pack had but reached
their tracks, and instantly slunk aside, cowed; the yell of
pursuit changing to yelps and whines. So abhorrent was that fell
creature to beast as to man.

She had drawn her furs more closely to her, disposing them so
that, instead of flying loose to her heels, no drapery hung lower