Then it came to the hour of eight and his anxieties passed.

The army was now drawn up before its tents in line, but the enemy was not yet ready and so they had to wait.

When the signal at length was given and the cannoniers fired their pieces, and the musketoons were shot off, many men fell.  Now Rodriguez, with Morano, was placed on the right, and either through a slight difference in numbers or because of an unevenness in the array of battle they a little overlapped the enemy’s left.  When a few men fell wounded there by the discharge of the musketoons this overlapping was even more pronounced.

Now the leaders of that fair army scorned all unknightly devices, and would never have descended to any vile ruse de querre.  The reproach can therefore never be made against them that they ever intended to outflank their enemy.  Yet, when both armies advanced after the discharge of the musketoons and the merry noise of the cannon, this occurred as the result of chance, which no leader can be held accountable for; so that those that speak of treachery in this battle, and deliberate outflanking, lie.

Now Rodriguez as he advanced with his sword, when the musketoons were empty, had already chosen his adversary.  For he had carefully watched those opposite to him, before any smoke should obscure them, and had selected the one who from the splendour of his dress might be expected to possess the finest castle.  Certainly this adversary outshone those amongst whom he stood, and gave fair promise of owning goodly possessions, for he wore a fine green cloak over a dress of lilac, and his helm and cuirass had a look of crafty workmanship.  Towards him Rodriguez marched.

Then began fighting foot to foot, and there was a pretty laying on of swords.  And had there been a poet there that day then the story of their fight had come down to you, my reader, all that way from the Pyrenees, down all those hundreds of years, and this tale of mine had been useless, the lame repetition in prose of songs that your nurses had sung to you.  But they fought unseen by those that see for the Muses.

Rodriguez advanced upon his chosen adversary and, having briefly bowed, they engaged at once.  And Rodriguez belaboured his helm till dints appeared, and beat it with swift strokes yet till the dints were cracks, and beat the cracks till hair began to appear:  and all the while his adversary’s strokes grew weaker and wilder, until he tottered to earth and Rodriguez had won.  Swift then as cats, while Morano kept off others, Rodriguez leaped to his throat, and, holding up the stiletto that he had long ago taken as his legacy from the host of the Dragon and Knight, he demanded the fallen man’s castle as ransom for his life.

“My castle, senor?” said his prisoner weakly.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez impatiently.

“Yes, senor,” said his adversary and closed his eyes for awhile.

“Does he surrender his castle, master?” asked Morano.