ife that such a devil as you should carry me away.

Chapter 1.XXXV.

How Gymnast very souply and cunningly killed Captain Tripet and others of
Picrochole's men.

When they heard these words, some amongst them began to be afraid, and
blessed themselves with both hands, thinking indeed that he had been a
devil disguised, insomuch that one of them, named Good John, captain of the
trained bands of the country bumpkins, took his psalter out of his
codpiece, and cried out aloud, Hagios ho theos. If thou be of God, speak;
if thou be of the other spirit, avoid hence, and get thee going. Yet he
went not away. Which words being heard by all the soldiers that were
there, divers of them being a little inwardly terrified, departed from the
place. All this did Gymnast very well remark and consider, and therefore
making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising
himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly, with his short sword by his
thigh, shifting his foot in the stirrup, performed the stirrup-leather
feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he forthwith
launched himself aloft in the air, and placed both his feet together on the
saddle, standing upright with his back turned towards the horse's head.
Now, said he, my case goes backward. Then suddenly in the same very
posture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and, turning to
the left hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just into its
former stance, without missing one jot. Ha, said Tripet, I will not do
that at this time, and not without cause. Well, said Gymnast, I have
failed, I will undo this leap. Then with a marvellous strength and
agility, turning towards the right hand, he fetched another frisking gambol
as before, which done, he set his right-hand thumb upon the hind-bow of the
saddle, raised himself up, and sprung in the air, poising and upholding his
whole body upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and
whirled himself about three times. At the fourth, reversing his body, and
overturning it upside down, and foreside back, without touching anything,
he brought himself betwixt the horse's two ears, springing with all his
body into the air, upon the thumb of his left hand, and in that posture,
turning like a windmill, did most actively do that trick which is called
the miller's pass. After this, clapping his right hand flat upon the
middle of the saddle, he gave himself