Somehow, with the assistance of the beautiful Foulata, who, since we had been the means of saving her life, had constituted herself our handmaiden, and especially Good’s, we managed to get off the chain shirts, which had certainly saved the lives of two of us that day.  As I expected, we found that the flesh underneath was terribly contused, for though the steel links had kept the weapons from entering, they had not prevented them from bruising.  Both Sir Henry and Good were a mass of contusions, and I was by no means free.  As a remedy Foulata brought us some pounded green leaves, with an aromatic odour, which, when applied as a plaster, gave us considerable relief.

But though the bruises were painful, they did not give us such anxiety as Sir Henry’s and Good’s wounds.  Good had a hole right through the fleshy part of his “beautiful white leg,” from which he had lost a great deal of blood; and Sir Henry, with other hurts, had a deep cut over the jaw, inflicted by Twala’s battle-axe.  Luckily Good is a very decent surgeon, and so soon as his small box of medicines was forthcoming, having thoroughly cleansed the wounds, he managed to stitch up first Sir Henry’s and then his own pretty satisfactorily, considering the imperfect light given by the primitive Kukuana lamp in the hut.  Afterwards he plentifully smeared the injured places with some antiseptic ointment, of which there was a pot in the little box, and we covered them with the remains of a pocket-handkerchief which we possessed.

Meanwhile Foulata had prepared us some strong broth, for we were too weary to eat.  This we swallowed, and then threw ourselves down on the piles of magnificent karrosses, or fur rugs, which were scattered about the dead king’s great hut.  By a very strange instance of the irony of fate, it was on Twala’s own couch, and wrapped in Twala’s own particular karross, that Sir Henry, the man who had slain him, slept that night.

I say slept; but after that day’s work, sleep was indeed difficult.  To begin with, in very truth the air was full

 “Of farewells to the dying
  And mournings for the dead.”

From every direction came the sound of the wailing of women whose husbands, sons, and brothers had perished in the battle.  No wonder that they wailed, for over twelve thousand men, or nearly a fifth of the Kukuana army, had been destroyed in that awful struggle.  It was heart-rending to lie and listen to their cries for those who never would return; and it made me understand the full horror of the work done that day to further man’s ambition.  Towards midnight, however, the ceaseless crying of the women grew less frequent, till at length the silence was only broken at intervals of a few minutes by a long piercing howl that came from a hut in our immediate rear, which, as I afterwards discovered, proceeded from Gagool “keening” over the dead king Twala.