At the first rattle of the sticks, the crowd began cheering again, and pressed in closer to the stage; and I with them, for it was very exciting, _that_ I felt at once. The coolness and resolution in the faces of the two men, as they struck and parried with those heavy sticks, trying all the points of each other’s play in a dozen rapid exchanges; the skill and power which every turn of the wrist showed; and the absolute indifference with which they treated any chance blow which fell on arm or shoulder, made it really a grand sight; and with all my prejudices I couldn’t help greatly admiring the players. “Bout,” cried Bunn, after a minute or so, and down came their guards, and they walked to the side of the stage to collect coppers from the crowd below in the baskets of their sticks, while the two first wrestlers put to in the middle. I suppose there are more unsettled points in wrestling, or it is harder to see whether the men are playing fair, for the crowd was much more excited now than at the backsword play, a hundred voices shouting to the umpires every moment to stop this or that practice. Besides, the kicking, which is allowed at elbow and collar wrestling, makes it look brutal very often; and so I didn’t like it so much as the backsword play, though the men were fine, good-tempered fellows, and, when most excited, only seemed to want what they called “fair doos.” I stopped by the stage until Gregory had lost his head. How it happened I couldn’t see, but suddenly the umpires cried out “Blood!” The men stopped; Gregory put up his hand to his hair, found that the blood was really coming, and then dropped his stick and got down, quite as much surprised as I was. And two more old gamesters were called up, the first head being to Somersetshire. But now I heard that the cart-horse race was just coming off, and so following the crowd, made my way across to the east of the Castle. I scrambled up to the highest part of the bank, and so got a capital view of the scene below. The course was marked out all the way down to the starting-post by rows of little pink and white flags, and the Committee-men were riding slowly up and down, trying to get the people to keep back behind the flags. The line was, on the whole, pretty well kept; but as the crowd got thicker every minute, every now and then a woman with two or three children would wander out to escape the pressure from behind; or a young couple keeping company would run across, hoping to better their position; or a lot of uproarious boys would start out for a lark, to try the tempers, and very possibly the whips, of the Committee.