For I had made no mistake. The first man to come up was Clarence--Clarence himself. He let fall a savage word as his horse stopped suddenly with its fore feet spread out on the edge of the stream, and his dark face grew darker as he saw the swirling eddies, and me standing fronting him in the moonlight with my sword out. He discerned at once, I think, the strength of my position. Where I stood the water was scarcely over my horse's fetlocks. Where he stood it was over his horse's knees. And between us it flowed nearly four feet deep. He held a hasty parley with his companions. And then he hailed me. "Will you surrender?" he cried in English. "We will give you quarter." "Surrender? To whom?" I said. "And why--why should I surrender? Are you robbers and cutpurses?" "Surrender in the name of the Emperor, you fool!" he answered sternly and roughly. "I know nothing about the Emperor!" I retorted. "What Emperor?" "In the Queen's name, then!" "The Duke of Cleves is queen here!" I cried. "And as the flood is rising," I added scornfully, "I would advise you to go home again." "You would advise, would you? Who _are_ you?" he replied, in a kind of wrathful curiosity. I gave him no answer. I have often since reflected, with a fuller knowledge of certain facts, that no stranger interview ever took place than this short colloquy between us, that no stranger fight ever was fought than that which we contemplated as we stood there bathed in the May moonlight, with the water all round us, and the cold sky above. A strange fight indeed it would have been between him and me, had it ever come to the sword's point! But this was what happened. His last words had scarcely rung out when my horse began to quiver under me and sway backward and forward. I had just time to take the alarm, when the poor beast sank down and rolled gently over, leaving me bestriding its body, my feet in the water. Whatever the cause of this, I had to disentangle myself, and that quickly, for the four men opposite me, seeing me dismounted, plunged with a cry of triumph into the water, and began to flounder across. Without more ado I stepped forward to keep the ford.