"He's down!" said Bevis. "They've got him."
He could see Mark Antony, who had risen out of the hollow; thus caught between two forces, Scipio pushing in front, the Pompeians broke and scattered to the right in a straggling line.
Bevis was so absorbed in the spectacle that, though the fight was only a short distance from him, the impulse to join it did not move him. He was lost in the sight.
Ted Pompey pounced on him from behind the sycamore-tree; Bevis involuntarily started forward, just escaping his clutch, struck, parried, and struck again.
Pompey, while driven backwards step by step by Scipio, had suddenly caught sight of Bevis standing alone by the sycamore. He slipped from Scipio, and ran round just as Bevis looked up at the cracking bough, and Mark sprang out of the hollow. Scipio's soldiers shouted, seeing Pompey as they thought running away. Mark for a moment could not understand what had become of him, the next he was occupied in driving the Pompeians as they yielded ground. Pompey running swiftly got round behind the tree and darted on Caesar, whose strategy had left him alone, intending to grasp him and seize him by main force.
Caesar Bevis slipped from him by the breadth of half an inch.
Pompey hit hard, twice, thrice; crash, clatter. His arm was strong, and the sword fell heavy; rattle, crash. He hit his hardest, fearing help would come to Bevis. Swish! slash!
Thwack! He felt a sharp blow on his shoulder. Bevis kept him off, saw an opportunity, and cut him. With swords he was more than Ted's match. He and Mark had so often practised they had both become crafty at fencing. The harder Ted hit, overbalancing himself to put force into the blow, and the less able to recover himself quickly, the easier Bevis warded, and every three knocks gave Ted a rap. Ted danced round him, trying to get an advantage; he swung his sword to and fro in front of him horizontally. Bevis retired to avoid it past the sycamore. Finding this answer, Ted swung it all the more furiously, and Bevis retreated, watching his chance, and they passed several trees on to the narrow breadth of level short sward between the trees and the quarry.
Ted's chest heaved with the fury of his blows; Bevis could not ward them, at least not so as to be able to strike afterwards. But suddenly, as Ted swung it still fiercer, Bevis resolutely received the sword full on his left arm--thud, and stopped it. Before Ted could recover himself Bevis hit his wrist, and his sword dropped from it on the ground.