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Sooth to say, the hand-play was not so hard to them as it had been betwixt the bent and the houses; for the Dusky Men were intent on dealing with the men of the kindreds from the southern road, who stood war-wearied before them; and they were hewing and casting at them, and baying and yelling like dogs; and though they turned about to meet the storm of the Woodlanders, yet their hearts failed them withal, and they strove to edge away from betwixt those two fearful scythes of war, fighting as men fleeing, not as men in onset.
The male was comparing his large dark hand to the female's smaller and lighter one. This hand-play caused Gabriele's face to cringe in repulsion. This rapacious need to extend beyond oneself in mergers with other persons violated human decency.
Then the chieftain on the high-seat put his two hands to his mouth and roared out: "Fall on, ye champions, fall on!" But the folk in the hall were so eager that they stood on the benches and the boards, and craned over each other's shoulders, so that they might lose no whit of the hand-play.
With an insolent gesture, the envoy, raising his hand, palm up, and turning it lightly over, said that even so, and with such ease, would he overturn the little city; and Andromachus, mocking his hand-play, answered that if he did not leave the harbour, even so would he upset his galley. The Carthaginians sailed away. The city remained firm-perched.
"Yea," said Jack, "and stout fellows be they for the more part; and hard had been the hand-play had we met, ere they had turned their backs; but now, see thou, we shall wend side by side toward Oakenrealm, for our Lord there hath won them to his friends; and doubt thou not that when they see him and thee anigh, they shall be friends indeed. What! dost thou weep for this?
For the good town is gathering a gallant host of men; and we shall look to thee to do well in the hard hand-play, whenso that befalleth. But now come and look at my house within, how fair it is, and thou wilt see that thou wilt have somewhat to fight for, whereas I am."
Then as his mind pictured him amongst the foe, it made therewith another picture of the slender warrior Sun-beam caught in the tangle of battle, and longing for him and calling for him amidst the hard hand-play. And thereat his face flushed, and all his body waxed hot, and he was on the very point of leading the onset against the foe on the left.
It may be Alliteration, the letter-rhyme or "beginning-rhyme" of Old English poetry: "Him be healfe stod hyse unweaxen, Cniht on gecampe, se full caflice." Tennyson imitates it in his "Battle of Brunanburh": "Mighty the Mercian, Hard was his hand-play, Sparing not any of Those that with Anlaf, Warriors over the Weltering waters Borne in the bark's-bosom, Drew to this island Doomed to the death."
"Two good men of the township," he said, "Hob Horner and Antony Webber, were slain outright, Hob with a shaft and Antony in the hand-play, and John Pargetter hurt very sore on the shoulder with a glaive; and five more men of the Fellowship slain in the hand-play, and some few hurt, but not sorely.
For thee battle is ended, and therewith the reward of battle, which the warrior remembereth not amidst the hard hand-play: peace hath begun, and thou needest not be careful for the endurance thereof: for in this land no man hath a lack which he may not satisfy without taking aught from any other.
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