Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/36

 quivered all over. His muscles were bunched together, his veins stood out like ivy-stems about a tree. One of his eyes sank deep in his head, the other bulged. His mouth was stretched from ear to ear, and twisted so that he who looked at it could not take away his eyes. Foam dropped from his lips. His heart hammered aloud. His hair, already tangled in the fight, stood up stiff until it was like some mass of thorns filling a hedge-gap. So swollen was he that he seemed another man, or not a man, but a giant.

Cohoolin and Ferdia grappled one another until they were more like one writhing four-armed and four-legged monster than two men. Spear after spear had been bent up or broken in pieces. They could no longer see one another, but they had eyes in arms and feet and weapons. The spears and shields had eyes to wound and to avoid wounds. The inhuman glen folk and goblins that are as light and quick as echoes and more frightful than any dream, clung to their shield-rims, their sword-hilts, their spear-shafts, and flew away and returned again like swallows to a roof. The trampling of the heroes turned the river out of its course, but the river-bed where they fought was none the drier for that because of their blood. As they reeled this way or that, in the drunkenness of the fight, their followers rushed to and fro like children when a chained bull suddenly breaks loose. The bellowing and the groaning alarmed the horses, and sent them all galloping away in madness of fear. All the men who had not been trampled down by the fighters and horses set off in pursuit. The women hid themselves. Only Cohoolin's charioteer remained looking on. It was well that he did. For Ferdia gave Cohoolin a great wound with his sword, and the hero staggered. Then he called for his gaebolg with its