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"'Tis a fairish company!" said Sir Brian. "And I do lack my sword-arm!" sighed Sir Benedict, "but my left hath served me well ere now." "And Sir Pertolepe lieth yet in Winisfarne!" said Beltane thoughtfully. "Aye," nodded Sir Benedict, "and shall march south to cut off our retreat if haply any of us escape Sir Rollo's onfall." "So should we strike camp and march forthright," said Sir Brian.
War tempts him to prolixity, to classical allusion, even to hexameters of astonishingly loose joints. Every stroke of his hero's sword-arm seems to him of weight. No doubt it was, once; but not in a chronicle of this sort, where the Cypriote gests must take a lowly place among others fair and foul of this King-errant. Let me put Milo on the shelf for a little, and abridge.
"Ugly, maybe," returned Hogan, spreading out his palms, "but what choice had I? The fool came at me, bilbo in hand, and I was forced to draw. "But not to slay, Hogan!" "Twas an accident. Sink me, it was! I sought his sword-arm; but the light was bad, and my point went through his chest instead." For a moment Crispin stood frowning, then his brow cleared, as though he had put the matter from him.
With which admirable reflection I sent my sword through Von Reuss's sword-arm, in the fleshy part, severing the muscle and causing him to drop his blade. I had him then at my mercy, and experienced a great desire to push my blade down his throat, for a treacherous cowardly hound as he had proved himself to me.
To his surprise he met a sword-arm that none might have expected in an American, for Barney Custer had been a pupil of the redoubtable Colonel Monstery, who was, as Barney was wont to say, "one of the thanwhomest of fencing masters." Quickly Maenck fell back to give place to Stein, but not before the American's point had found him twice to leave him streaming blood from two deep flesh wounds.
A beautiful instance of the quick and generous impulses to which the French are prone, is given in the case of a French cavalier, in the hottest of the action, charging furiously upon a British officer, but perceiving in the moment of assault that his adversary had lost his sword-arm, dropping the point of his saber, and courteously riding on.
Blow upon blow, with clash of steel, thrust after thrust as the darting of serpents, till the dead lay in heaps, and the horses' hoofs churned blood and grass to a green-red foam, till the sword-arm waited high and then sank slowly, because there was none for the sword to strike, and the point rested among the close-sewn rings of mail on Buondelmonte's foot, and the thin streams of blood trickled quietly down the dimmed blade.
"He broke his sword-arm with a blow, and the Frenchman's sabre fell to the earth." "Here he is, Mister Charles; and musha, but it's trouble he gave me to catch him! And I hope your honor won't be displeased at me losing the brown horse. I was obliged to let him go when the thief closed on me; but sure, there he is! May I never, if he's not galloping into the lines by himself!"
Woffington's housewife, ma'am, fearful to the eye, only it holds everything in the world, and there is a small space for everything else to be returned by the bearer. Thank you, sir." Roxalana. "The lady sews quicker than you, mother." Woffington. "Bless the child, don't come so near my sword-arm; the needle will go into your eye, and out at the back of your head."
Once I thought I had him in the sword-arm, after a circular parry, but he was too quick for me. We were sweating freely by now, and by reason of the buzzing in my ears I could scarce hear the applause of the seconds. What unlucky chance it was I know not that impelled Comyn to essay again the trick by which he had come so near to spitting me; but try it he did, this time in prime and seconde.
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