The Cruise of the Branwen

PREPARATIONS In the last weeks before our start the code of fencing rules to be used in the tournament reached London, and it at once became evident that they had been drawn up by some one more conversant with the foil than with the sword. We immediately formulated our objections, printed than in a small pamphlet, and sent them off to Greece, signed by every member of the team and warmly supported by the official recommen– dations of the British Olympic Association. The larger proportion of our wishes were eventually carried out, for we only demanded the same code of rules invariably employed in similar tournaments in Paris, London, Ostend, and elsewhere; but I was most unexpectedly faced, on arrival in Athens, by a demand from the French that we should fight with buttons only on our swords, and without the pointe d' arret, that slightly projecting atom of keen steel which greatly assists a judge in seeing whether a hit has been made with the point or not, and which often is the only method by which a perfectly legitimate score can be rapidly and neatly made upon the wrist, forearm, or hand. However, in time we surmounted the French objections; and it eventually appeared that they had had a very~natural reason, for their origina– tor, a brilliant fieurettiste, was rightly anxious to avoid as far as possible those very hits upon the forearm by which he was eventually touched on several occasions by our .team. On Thursday, April I 2, I 906, Newton Robinson, Seligman, and myself started from Victoria 27