The fleeing survivors of the Scaly Ones had gone, with companies of light armed Amazons in hot pursuit. The others were tending the wounded and gathering up the dead, picking up fallen weapons, doing all the routine tasks that are the aftermath of battle. Closana was now surrounded by a body-guard of tall, blonde Amazons whose loin-cloths bore the same design of a golden arrow-head as her own.
"I think," she said to Gerry, "that you should come to see my father Rupin-Sang, who is ruler of this land."
Quite a thinker, decided Gerry.
"We can take you there in the ship if you show us the way," he said shortly.
A horde of Amazons thronged around the big blue-and-silver hull of the Viking where she lay in the knee-high grass. As the members of the landing party filed on board and turned their ray-tubes in to the Ordnance Officer to be recharged, the other members of the crew came out to stare at the visitors. Angus McTavish stood on the steps of the ladder with his big fists on his hips.
"Will ye look at all the bonny lassies!" he said, "This may not be such a bad planet after all."
The feminine warriors of Venus saw McTavish then, and a sudden murmur swept over the throng. An instant later a hundred blades flashed in the air in salute, and then all the Amazons dropped down on one knee.
"Now what the devil...?" muttered Steve Brent who had come out of the ship just behind McTavish.
"Just a proper tribute to my outstanding personality, lad!" the big Scot muttered aside. Closana read the surprise in Gerry Norton's eyes.
"There are few men in this land of Savissa," she explained, "And the wearing of a beard is the sign of a noble of the highest rank."