Turning his men he would form them to receive attack, but they are not quick enough. The rapid skates bear the Dutch and English upon them like charge of cavalry, the slippery ice impedes them, and in a minute the Spanish formation is dashed to pieces, the ice becoming the scene of hundreds of individual combats, the Hollanders and the English having the best of it, attacking whom they like, retreating when they please.
It is a funny affair, though blood flows like water, and men die shaking with merriment—the guffaws mingling with death shrieks. Guy himself, as he cuts down a man, laughs at the fellow’s headless corpse turning a somersault upon the slippery ice. One Spaniard running, pursued by a Dutch skater, throws himself desperately upon the ice, and the Dutchman goes headlong over him, but being quick with his feet, gives his antagonist a lucky jab in the eye with his sharp Friesland skate, and the Spaniard is dead before the Dutchman recovers his feet.
After the first rush, Guy’s eye is on the leader of the [[181]]Spanish troops, and the leader of the Spanish troops has his eye on him.
Till now the Castilian has fought very silently and very deadly; though not accustomed to the ice, his skill at fence is so great that two or three Dutchmen have gone down before him wounded, and one English sailor will never see his mother again, by force of his Toledo blade.
The Spaniard now cries: “Come on, I know you. You are the First of the English. Come on, and though you have wings, I’ll clip them!”
This kind of a challenge is not to be ignored by English knight. It is a kind that prevailed in the days of chivalry, not quite faded out of England, and Chester accepts it.
Then the two come together, the Englishman’s heavy sword giving play against the more subtle and delicate point of the Toledo, and were not Guy armored in steel this day would be the last of him.
The Spaniard has a wrist of steel and his sword’s play is of the finest Italian school; but Guy makes his heels save his head. This angers the Spaniard, and he grinds his teeth—while Chester deftly “grinds the bar,” a skater’s trick that enables him to circle round the Castilian, giving him two cuts that even his skill of fence can hardly parry.
The next shoot round his enemy Guy gets his blade on his man, wounding him slightly. But carried forward in making a cut, one of Sir Guy Chester’s knightly spurs catches in his skates and he were lost did he not by quick action drop sitting down on both skates and glide from his antagonist.
He is half a hundred yards away before he turns to find himself face to face with poor little Ensign de Busaco, who is having a hard time of it, being slightly wounded; his heavy Jack boots impeding his progress on the ice.