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He saw my object to push him to unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness and he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold. Here the end came quickly.
You'll be cut down or prisoners before you can raise a hand." These words were all said in a jerky way in the midst of plenty of cutting and foining; for, though the Frenchmen did not attempt to pass the doorway, they kept on making fierce thrusts at us, though with little result.
A man of desperate courage, a gambler, a professional duellist, a bravo, famous in his time among the "common hacksters and swaggerers" as the first to introduce the custom of foining, or thrusting with the rapier in single combats whereas before his day it had been customary among the English to fight with sword and shield, and held unmanly to strike below the girdle he had perpetually changed sides, in the Netherland wars, with the shameless disregard to principle which characterized all his actions.
Sailor-fashion, he had no armor on but a light morion and a cuirass, so he was not too much encumbered to prevent his springing to his legs instantly, and setting to work, cutting and foining right and left at every sound, for sight there was none. But alas! here stern fate interfered.
Whereon he got to his sword, and I to mine; and a very near chance I had of never bathing on the pebble ridge more; for the fellow did not fight with edge and buckler, like a Christian, but had some newfangled French devil's device of scryming and foining with his point, ha'ing and stamping, and tracing at me, that I expected to be full of eyelet holes ere I could close with him."
"Alight, Sir Tristram," he cried, pulling out his sword, "my horse has failed me, but the earth shall not." So together they rushed, and lashed at each other in fury, slashing and tearing, foining, and making such fearful strokes that the kings and knights held their breath in horror and amazement that two men could use each other so, and neither give in.
So they fought for nigh the space of an hour, foining and striking, and tracing hither and tracing thither most furiously; and the noise of the blows they struck might have been heard several furlongs away. So he rushed the battle with might and main, and therewith struck so many furious blows that by and by that other knight held his shield very low for weariness.
Then they began a fierce and desperate fight, striking and foining, rushing together in furious onset, and drawing back in cautious heed, while the ring of sword on armor was like that of hammer on anvil. Hours passed in the fight, and the blood flowed freely from the wounds which each had received, yet still they stood boldly up to the combat.
When they had rested they went to battle once more, tracing and foining and hurtling together, so that none who beheld them could know which was like to win the battle. Their clothing was so far hewn that the chains of their coats of mail could be seen. Alpin had a cut across his knee, Roderic's arm was bleeding.
Never was a man nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut him down. 'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it.
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