The unforeseen appearance of this troop did not dismay Kennybol. In time of danger there is a point where surprise and fear become impossible. At the first sound of trumpet and drum the old fox of Kiölen halted his men. As the royal troops drew up before him in line of battle, he ordered every gun to be loaded, and formed his mountaineers in double ranks, so that they might not offer so broad a mark for the enemy’s fire. He placed himself at the head, the giant at his side, as in the heat of action, for he began to feel quite familiar with him, and observed that his eyes did not flame quite so brightly as a smithy’s forge, and that his pretended claws were by no means as unlike ordinary human fingernails as was claimed for them. When the officer in command of the musketeers stepped forward as if to surrender, and the sharpshooters ceased firing, although their loud shouts, ringing out on every hand, declared them still ambushed in the forests, he suspended his preparations for defence. Meantime, the officer with the white flag had reached the centre of the space between the two hostile columns; here he paused, and the trumpeter accompanying him blew three loud blasts. The officer then cried in a loud voice, distinctly heard by the mountaineers, in spite of the ever increasing tumult of the battle raging behind them in the mountain gorges: “In the king’s name! The king graciously pardons all those rebels who throw down their arms and surrender their leaders to his Majesty’s supreme justice!” The bearer of the flag of truce had scarcely pronounced those words, when a shot was fired from a neighboring thicket. The officer staggered, took a few steps forward, raising his flag above his head, and fell, exclaiming: “Treason!” No one knew whose hand had fired the fatal shot. “Treason! Cowardly treason!” repeated the royal troops, with a thrill of indignation. And a fearful volley of musketry overwhelmed the mountaineers. “Treason!” replied the mountaineers in their turn, made furious as they saw their brothers fall. And a general discharge answered the unexpected attack from the royal troops. “At them, comrades! Death to those vile cowards! Death!” cried the officers of the musketeers. And both parties rushed forward with drawn swords, the two contending columns meeting directly over the body of the unfortunate officer, with a fearful din of arms. The broken ranks were soon inextricably confounded. Rebel chiefs, king’s officers, soldiers, mountaineers, all pell-mell ran their heads together, seized one another, grappled like two bands of famished tigers meeting in the desert. Their long pikes, bayonets, and partisans were now useless; swords and hatchets alone gleamed above their heads, and many of the combatants, in their hand-to-hand struggle, could use no other weapon than their dagger or their teeth.