“Fair nephew, thanks; but e'en for my sake halt. If thou do touch it, I am surely lost; and if thou spare it, saved. I might have slain it, and yet did not so; something now tells me I held not my hand in vain. Let it, then, go its course; and keep my men from coming on too near.”
“My lord,” Sir Gawain answered him with tears, “must I, then, let you perish without help?”
“The best of help,” the king rejoined, “will be to do my bidding.”
Sir Gawain was at this so much incensed, he cast down lance and shield, he tore his cloak and handfuls from his hair.
Just at this time Ivan and Tristrem came, with lances lowered, and at top of speed; Gawain threw up his hands, and loudly cried:
“Strike not, my lords, for his, King Arthur's sake; he's a dead man if you but touch the beast.”
“What, then, are we to do?” inquired they.
“We'll follow it,” quoth Gawain: “if the king be hurt, the beast shall die.”
The monster still kept on its even way, not seeming to remark the knights, until a rock it reached, lofty and round and high. It scaled it, as a swallow, rapidly; and Gawain and his friends, who at a distance followed, sad and full of thought, saw it, when thus the summit was attained, crawl straight towards a peak which overhung. There, stretching out its head, it held the king suspended o'er the abyss. Judge the alarm of Gawain and his friends, who each beside was almost wild with rage! Hearing their cries, they who remained behind came up full spur, and reached the lofty rock, where, at the summit, they beheld the king hanging thus helpless from the monster's horns. They then gave loose to the most doleful cries that ever had been heard. I cannot picture to you their despair. Brave knights and pages then you might have seen tearing their hair and rending their attire, that wood reviling and the strange adventure which they had come to seek. And Quex exclaimed, by way of final stroke:
“Alas! fair chivalry, how hard thy lot! this day to cause the death of our good king, and lose thy valour when 'twas needed most!”