lders, one hand on our swords and one eye on
the tree, which nigh overhung us.

'I know not how the Devils leaped down, or how the fight began. I heard
Hugh cry: "Out! out!" as though he were at Santlache again; I saw
Thorkild's steel cap smitten off his head by a great hairy hand, and I
felt an arrow from the ship whistle past my ear. They say that till Witta
took his sword to the rowers he could not bring his ship in shore; and
each one of the four archers said afterwards that he alone had pierced the
Devil that fought me. I do not know. I went to it in my mail-shirt, which
saved my skin. With long-sword and belt-dagger I fought for the life
against a Devil whose very feet were hands, and who whirled me back and
forth like a dead branch. He had me by the waist, my arms to my side, when
an arrow from the ship pierced him between the shoulders, and he loosened
grip. I passed my sword twice through him, and he crutched himself away
between his long arms, coughing and moaning. Next, as I remember, I saw
Thorkild of Borkum bareheaded and smiling, leaping up and down before a
Devil that leaped and gnashed his teeth. Then Hugh passed, his sword
shifted to his left hand, and I wondered why I had not known that Hugh was
a left-handed man; and thereafter I remembered nothing till I felt spray
on my face, and we were in sunshine on the open sea. That was twenty days
after.'

'What had happened? Did Hugh die?' the children asked.

'Never was such a fight fought by christened man,' said Sir Richard. 'An
arrow from the ship had saved me from my Devil, and Thorkild of Borkum had
given back before his Devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot it
all full of arrows from near by; but Hugh's Devil was cunning, and had
kept behind trees, where no arrow could reach. Body to body there, by
stark strength of sword and hand, had Hugh slain him, and, dying, the
Thing had clenched his teeth on the sword. Judge what teeth they were!'

Sir Richard turned the sword again that the children might see the two
great chiselled gouges on either side of the blade.

'Those same teeth met in Hugh's right arm and side,' Sir Richard went on.
'I? Oh, I had no more than a broken foot and a fever. Thorkild's ear was
bitten, but Hugh's arm and side clean withered away. I saw him where he
lay along, sucking a fruit in his left hand. His flesh was wasted off his
bones, his hair was patched with white, and his hand was blue-veined like
a woman's. He put h