Never on a single charger rides that stout and stalwart Moor,—
Five beneath his stride so stately bear him o’er the trembling floor;
Five Arabians, black as midnight—on their necks the rein he throws,
And the outer and the inner feel the pressure of his toes. [18]
Never wore that chieftain armour; in a knot himself he ties,
With his grizzly head appearing in the centre of his thighs,
Till the petrified spectator asks, in paralysed alarm,
Where may be the warrior’s body,—which is leg, and which is arm?
“Sound the charge!” The coursers started; with a yell and furious vault,
High in air the Moorish champion cut a wondrous somersault;
O’er the head of Don Fernando like a tennis-ball he sprung,
Caught him tightly by the girdle, and behind the crupper hung.
Then his dagger Don Fernando plucked from out its jewelled sheath,
And he struck the Moor so fiercely, as he grappled him beneath,
That the good Damascus weapon sank within the folds of fat,
And as dead as Julius Cæsar dropped the Gordian Acrobat.
Meanwhile fast the sun was sinking—it had sunk beneath the sea,
Ere Fernando Gomersalez smote the latter of the three;
And Al-Widdicomb, the monarch, pointed, with a bitter smile,
To the deeply-darkening canvas;—blacker grew it all the while.
“Thou hast slain my warriors, Spaniard! but thou hast not kept thy time;
Only two had sunk before thee ere I heard the curfew chime;
Back thou goest to thy dungeon, and thou may’st be wondrous glad,
That thy head is on thy shoulders for thy work to-day, my lad!
“Therefore all thy boasted valour, Christian dog, of no avail is!”
Dark as midnight grew the brow of Don Fernando Gomersalez:—