But with sudden defiance he challenged them all, and thus did he say:
“Sea-rovers, hearken the thing that is meet and right ye should know.
This is the ordinance—none may depart, from my country to go,
Even none who hath come to Bebrykia’s folk out of alien lands,
Or ever against mine hands he hath lifted in battle his hands.
Choose for you therefore the mightiest man of all your array,
And set ye him here for the strife of the fist against me this day.
But and if ye shall shrink from the trial, and trample my laws underfoot,
Verily mighty constraint shall pursue you with bitter pursuit.”
So spake he in pride overweening, and came upon them as they heard
Fierce anger, but most by his threatening vaunt Polydeukes was stirred.
Straightway he stood for his fellows’ champion forth, and he cried:
“Peace!—threaten not us, whatsoever the name that hath puffed thee with pride,
With brutal mishandling:—yea, unto these thy laws will we bow.
Even I right willingly offer me—lo, I will meet thee now.”
Roundly he spake; and with rolling eyes glared on him the king
As a lion javelin-smitten, when out on the mountains the ring
Of the hunters hemmeth him round; but, albeit encompassed about
By the throng, he heedeth them not, but his glance ever searcheth him out,
Him only, which wounded him first, yet quelled him not with the stroke.
Then Tyndareus’ son laid by his goodly-woven cloak
Of delicate threads, a gift of remembrance for sweet days past
Of a daughter of Lemnos. His mantle’s dark folds Amykus cast,
With the clasps thereof, to the ground, and the shepherd’s staff that he bore,
The rugged olive his hand from the windy hill-slope tore.
Then looked they, and chose for the combat a spot that was good in their sight;
And all their companions they bade sit down to left and to right.
Then stood they forth, nor in form nor in stature alike to behold:
But the one might be seed of Typhôeus the fell, or a monster of old,
Ay, even as one of the giant brood of Earth, which she bare
To wreak upon Zeus her wrath: but Tyndareus’ son showed fair
As the star of the heaven, whose loveliest beams through the fading blue
Shine in the eventide, when the wings of the night drop dew.
Even such was the child of Zeus, and the soft down bloomed on his chin,
And bright were his dancing eyes: but waxed his breast within
His fury and might like a wild beast’s rage; and he struck out fast
With his hands, making trial if swift were their play, as in days overpast,
Uncramped by the stress of toil and the strain of the weary oar.
But Amykus proved not his limbs, but he glared on his foe evermore
Standing in silence aloof, and he yearned in eager mood
To smite and bespatter the hero’s breast with the spurting blood.
And between them Lykôreus, Amykus’ henchman, cast on the ground
In front of their feet the fighting-gauntlets with thongs overbound,
Strips of the raw hide, dry, all ridged with wrinkles were they.
Then unto the hero the giant with arrogant words ’gan say:
“Whichsoever thou wilt, lo, freely and willingly grant I to thee,
Without casting of lots, that thou mayst not hereafter murmur at me.
Now bind them about thine hands: thou shalt learn, and to others shall tell
How featly I carve the tough bull-hides, how passing well
I wield them withal, to bedabble with blood the jaws of men.”
He spake, but the hero scorned with wrangling to answer again:
And he made no ado, but the pair lying nighest his feet, the same
Lightly smiling he took. Then unto him Kastor came,
And Talaus the mighty, the scion of Bias: they bound on his wrists
The gauntlets in haste, oft bidding him play the man in the lists.
And to Amykus Ornytus came and Arêtus; but naught knew they—
Fools!—that they girded a doomed man then for his latest fray.
So when they were ready, and forth in the lists stood face to face,
Straightway in front of their bodies their brawny hands did they raise.
Then closed they, and matched their might in the grim play furiously.
And now the Bebrykian king, as a charging wave of the sea
With storm-roughened crest overarcheth a ship, and would surely o’erwhelm,
But that scantly she ’scapeth by wisdom of him that swayeth the helm,
When over her bulwark to hurl itself mad is the surge of the wave;
So followed he hard upon Tyndareus’ son to daunt him: he gave
No respite. The hero by cunning keeping him scatheless aye
Baffled his every rush: well marked he his brutal play,
To wot if the giant in might were haply resistless, or no.
So ever he faced him and warded, and flashed back blow for blow.
And even as when the shipwrights with hammers mightily swinging
Smite on the beams of a galley, driving the clamps close-clinging
Sharply together, that bang upon clang cometh crashing and ringing,
And the air is a-shiver; so crack ’neath the buffets the cheeks of the twain,
So crash their jaws, and so clatter their teeth as the swift blows rain.
Nor flinch they nor falter, but facing each other smite they amain,
Till spent are they both, and for laboured panting they needs must refrain.
Then standing apart for a little they wiped from their foreheads away
The streaming sweat, while their deep chests heaved with the toil of the fray.
Then each against other again they rushed, as when on the lea
Two bulls for a heifer are fighting in fury of rivalry.
Then mid their battle did Amykus up to his full height spring
Like an ox-slayer straining a-tiptoe—downward the weight did he swing
Of his gauntleted hand on the hero; but swerving swift from the stroke
By a turn of his head hath he foiled him, hath caught on his shoulder and broke
Its force—he hath slipped past the knee of the giant his knee—he hath rushed
With his whole weight dashing his fist ’neath his ear, and the bones hath he crushed,
That for agony down on his knees he sank, and the Minyans’ shout
Rang; and with one great gasp was the giant’s life poured out.
Uprose the Bebrykian men to avenge the wild king’s fall:
And full upon Polydeukes as one man rushed they all
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