warriors of the two armies met, lance to lance.

The round shield of Muza received the Christian's weapon; his own spear
shivered, harmless, upon the breast of the giant. He drew his sword,
whirled it rapidly over his head, and, for some minutes, the eyes of the
bystanders could scarcely mark the marvellous rapidity with which strokes
were given and parried by those redoubted swordsmen.

At length, Hernando, anxious to bring to bear his superior strength,
spurred close to Muza; and, leaving his sword pendant by a thong to his
wrist, seized the shield of Muza in his formidable grasp, and plucked it
away, with a force that the Moor vainly endeavoured to resist: Muza,
therefore, suddenly released his bold; and, ere the Spaniard had
recovered his balance (which was lost by the success of his own strength,
put forth to the utmost), he dashed upon him the hoofs of his black
charger, and with a short but heavy mace, which he caught up from the
saddlebow, dealt Hernando so thundering a blow upon the helmet, that the
giant fell to the ground, stunned and senseless.

To dismount, to repossess himself of his shield, to resume his sabre, to
put one knee to the breast of his fallen foe, was the work of a moment;
and then had Don Hernando del Pulgar been sped, without priest or
surgeon, but that, alarmed by the peril of their most valiant comrade,
twenty knights spurred at once to the rescue, and the points of twenty
lances kept the Lion of Granada from his prey. Thither, with similar
speed, rushed the Moorish champions; and the fight became close and
deadly round the body of the still unconscious Christian. Not an instant
of leisure to unlace the helmet of Hernando, by removing which, alone,
the Moorish blade could find a mortal place, was permitted to Muza; and,
what with the spears and trampling hoofs around him, the situation of the