Chapter 36

They Attend The Games

At last the third day dawned; and facing us upon entering the plain,
was a throne of red log-wood, canopied by the foliage of a red-dyed
Pandannus. Upon this throne, purple-robed, reclined those very
magnificent and illustrious lords seigniors, the lord seigniors Hello
and Piko. Before them, were many gourds of wine; and crosswise, staked
in the sod, their own royal spears.

In the middle of the down, as if by a furrow, a long, oval space was
margined of about which, a crowd of spectators were seated. Opposite
the throne, was reserved a clear passage to the arena, defined by air-
lines, indefinitely produced from the leveled points of two spears, so
poised by a brace of warriors.

Drawing near, our party was courteously received, and assigned a
commodious lounge.

The first encounter was a club-fight between two warriors. Nor casque
of steel, nor skull of Congo could have resisted their blows, had they
fallen upon the mark; for they seemed bent upon driving each other, as
stakes, into the earth. Presently, one of them faltered; but his
adversary rushing in to cleave him down, slipped against a guavarind;
when the falterer, with one lucky blow, high into the air sent the
stumbler's club, which descended upon the crown of a spectator, who
was borne from the plain.

"All one," muttered Pike.

"As good dead as another," muttered Hello.

The second encounter was a hugging-match; wherein two warriors, masked
in Grisly-bear skins, hugged each other to death.

The third encounter was a bumping-match between a fat warrior and a
dwarf. Standing erect, his paunch like a bass-drum before a drummer,
the fat man was run at, head-a-tilt by the dwarf, and sent spinning
round on his axis.

The fourth encounter was a tussle between two-score warriors, who all
in a mass, writhed like the limbs in Sebastioni's painting of Hades.
After obscuring themselves in a cloud of dust, these combatants,
uninjured, but hugely blowing, drew off; and separately going among
the spectators, rehearsed their experience of the fray.

"Braggarts!" mumbled Piko.

"Poltroons!" growled Hello.

While the crowd were applauding, a sober-sided observer, trying to rub
the dust out of his eyes, inquired of an enthusiastic neighbor, "Pray,
what was all that about?"

"Fool! saw you not the dust?"

"That I did," said Sober-Sides, again rubbing his eyes, "But I can
raise a dust myself."

The fifth encounter was a fight of single sticks between one hundred
warriors, fifty on a side.

In a line, the first fifty emerged from the sumachs, their weapons
interlocked in