He sensed the narrowness of his escape without the mental action of reasoning it out, and his injuries were secondary to the oppressive horror of the uncanny combat out of which he had come alive.

Yet this horror was not a fear.
Heretofore he had recognized the ghostly owl-shapes of night more or less as a curious part of darkness, inspiring neither like nor dislike in him.

Now he hated them, and ever after his fangs gleamed white when one of them floated over his head.
He was badly hurt.

There were ragged tears in his flank and back, and a last stroke of Gargantua's talons had stabbed his shoulder to the bone.
Blood dripped from him, and one of his eyes was closing, so that shapes and shadows were grotesquely dim in the night.

Instinct and caution, and the burning pains in his body, urged him to lie down in a thicket and wait for the day.