Amuba and Jethro looked on with great interest, for they had seen painted on the walls representations of these fights between boatmen, which were of common occurrence, the Egyptians being a very combative race, and fierce feuds being often carried on for a long time between neighboring villages. The men were armed with poles some ten feet in length, and about an inch and a half in diameter, their favorite weapons on occasions of this kind. The boats had now come in close contact, and a furious battle at once commenced, the clattering of the sticks, the heavy thuds of the blows, and the shouts of the combatants creating a clamor that caused all the waterfowl within a circle of half a mile to fly screaming away across the lake. The men all used their heavy weapons with considerable ability, the greater part of the blows being warded off. Many, however, took effect, some of the combatants being knocked into the water, others fell prostrate in their boats, while some dropped their long staves after a disabling blow on the arm. “It is marvelous that they do not all kill each other,” Jethro said. “Surely this shaving of the head, Amuba, which has always struck us as being very peculiar, has its uses, for it must tend to thicken the skull, for surely the heads of no other men could have borne such blows without being crushed like water-jars.” That there was certainly some ground for Jethro’s supposition is proved by the fact that Herodotus, long afterward writing of the desperate conflicts between the villagers of Egypt, asserted that their skulls were thicker than those of any other people. Most of the men who fell into the water scrambled back into the boats and renewed the fight, but some sank immediately and were seen no more. At last, when fully half the men on each side had been put _hors de combat_, four or five having been killed or drowned, the boats separated, no advantage resting with either party; and still shouting defiance and jeers at each other, the men poled in the direction of their respective villages. “Are such desperate fights as these common?” Chebron asked the fishermen. “Yes; there are often quarrels,” one of them replied, quietly resuming his fishing as if nothing out of the ordinary way had taken place. “If they are water-side villages their champions fight in boats, as you have seen; if not, equal parties meet at a spot halfway between the villages and decide it on foot. Sometimes they fight with short sticks, the hand being protected by a basket hilt, while on the left arm a piece of wood, extending from the elbow to the tips of the fingers, is fastened on by straps serving as a shield; but more usually they fight with the long pole, which we call the neboot.”