Even as they who had been in the vaward now at length joined themselves to the rear, suddenly Simon saw Duke Baldwin's great charger stagger and reel and plunge unaccountably, and the next moment Simon found that his own horse was striving to make its way through ground as muddy and pulpy as a swamp. Water was squelching and oozing and bubbling over his horse's fetlocks; the young prince's horse was in the like stress; and, looking rapidly to left and right, Simon could see that all the extending line of knights had found the same difficulty in the way of their progress. It is some ditch, Simon thought, which can soon be passed, and he urged his steed with a spur to a progress that became momentarily more difficult. Duke Baldwin was floundering and struggling in the ever-increasing bog, and Simon could hear him cursing furiously as he strove to advance. Simon's own horse and the horse of the prince were now knee-deep in the horrible morass in which by this time all the knights were floundering. They could, indeed, advance a little still, but every step was harder than the last, and every inch of way seemed to find no firmer earth, while black splashes of water spurted from the puddled soil at every pace, and little pools sucked and gurgled ominously round the legs of the frightened horses. There must be dry land somewhere, Simon thought, too much bewildered by this singular obstacle to wonder how such a ditch as this could have remained unknown to the Athenian leader. Across the green corn he could see the Catalans still composedly standing at gaze, while on all sides of him now the heavily armed knights and the heavy horses were sinking deeper and deeper in the treacherous marsh. Duke Baldwin ahead was up to his horse's middle now in the clinging mud, and was vainly essaying with oaths and curses to urge the beast a little farther. Like flies glued in honey seemed all the chivalry of Athens, plunging and struggling to extricate themselves from the fatal fen, and then Simon saw how some of the men of the Catalan Grand Company began to move. First, the bowmen lifted their bows and drew arrow to ear, and then a cloud of shafts came over the entangled knights, who could neither advance nor retreat, but were limed helplessly in the imprisoning slime. Then swift Spanish soldiers came running nimbly towards them, picking their way easily over the sump in which the Athenians wallowed an inextricable mass of men and horses, and as the Spaniards ran the sunlight glittered on the long knives they carried in their hands.