"
"Well," quoth Sir Tristram, "as for that, meseems it will be time enough to
offer me mercy after you have overcome me in battle."
[Sidenote: Sir Tristram does battle with Sir Nabon] So thereupon each
knight took his place for assault, and when they were in all ways prepared,
each set spurs to his horse and dashed the one against the other, with a
dreadful, terrible fury of onset. Each smote the other in the very midst of
his shield, and at that blow the lance of each was altogether shivered into
pieces to the very truncheon thereof. But each knight recovered his horse
from the fall and each leaped to earth and drew his sword, and each rushed
against the other with such fury that it was as though sparks of pure fire
flew out from the oculariums of the helmets. Therewith they met together,
and each lashed and smote at the other such fell strokes that the noise
thereof might easily have been heard several furlongs away. Now in the
beginning of that battle Sir Tristram was at first sore bestead and wist
that he had met the biggest knight that ever he had encountered in all of
his life, unless it was Sir Launcelot of the Lake, whom he had encountered
as aforetold of in this history.
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