“Are such desperate fights as these common?” Chebron asked the fishermen.
“Yes; there are often quarrels,” one of them replied, quietly resuming his fishing as if nothing out of the ordinary way had taken place. “If they are water-side villages their champions fight in boats, as you have seen; if not, equal parties meet at a spot halfway between the villages and decide it on foot. Sometimes they fight with short sticks, the hand being protected by a basket hilt, while on the left arm a piece of wood, extending from the elbow to the tips of the fingers, is fastened on by straps serving as a shield; but more usually they fight with the long pole, which we call the neboot.”
“It is a fine weapon,” Jethro said, “and they guard their heads with it admirably, sliding their hands far apart. If I were back again, Amuba, I should like to organize a regiment of men armed with those weapons. It would need that the part used as a guard should be covered with light iron to prevent a sword or ax from cutting through it; but with that addition they would make splendid weapons, and footmen armed with sword and shield would find it hard indeed to repel an assault by them.”
“The drawback would be,” Amuba observed, “that each man would require so much room to wield his weapon that they must stand far apart, and each would be opposed to three or four swordsmen in the enemy’s line.”
“That is true, Amuba, and you have certainly hit upon the weak point in the use of such a weapon; but for single combat, or the fighting of broken ranks, they would be grand. When we get back to Thebes if I can find any peasant who can instruct me in the use of these neboots I will certainly learn it.”
“You ought to make a fine player,” one of the fishermen said, looking at Jethro’s powerful figure. “I should not like a crack on the head from a neboot in your hands. But the sun is getting low, and we had best be moving to the point where you are to disembark.”
“We have had another capital day, Rabah,” Chebron said when they reached their new encampment. “I hope that the rest will turn out as successful.”
“I think that I can promise you that they will, my lord. I have been making inquiries among the villagers, and find that the swamp in the river bed abounds with hippopotami.”
“How do you hunt them—on foot?”
“No, my lord. There is enough water in the river bed for the flat boats made of bundles of rushes to pass up, while in many places are deep pools in which the animals lie during the heat of the day.”