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horse corral; and he saw chariots upended against the house-place walls, and rough straw spear targets were set up, and several fine hunting dogs lay sleeping or scratching themselves in the sun; and on the level green space before the huts, boys and young men were playing hurley.
    Cuchulain walked towards them, and as they saw him coming, the game broke up, and a tall boy with silver-fair hairhanging about his brown neck, who seemed to be something of a leader among them, came to meet him, the hurley stick still in his hand, and the others crowding at his heels.
    â€˜Welcome, stranger. Do you come to join us?’
    â€˜That depends,’ Cuchulain said. ‘What is this place?’
    Some of the younger boys grinned and nudged each other at his not knowing, but the leader among them said courteously enough, pointing with the hurley stick, ‘Yonder is the D Å« n of Skatha the woman-warrior, and here on this side of the gulf we who have come to learn the arts of war from her have our lodging.’
    â€˜Then I am come to join you,’ said Cuchulain, with the great gladness that was on him. ‘I am Cuchulain, kinsman to Conor Mac Nessa the King of Ulster, and I too would learn the arts of war from this woman-warrior.’
    â€˜That makes good hearing!’ cried the pale-haired leader, ‘for many of us here are from Ireland. Myself, I am Ferdia, son to Daman, and my land is Connacht. Come now and eat, and quench the dust of the journey, and tell us the news of home, and if Slieve Cruachan stands where it stood last year.’
    So the game of hurley was forgotten and, rejoicing, they bore Cuchulain to the big central hut, where the slaves were preparing the evening meal.
    When he had eaten and drunk with the rest, he went out again with Ferdia, and looked across the gulf to the D Å« n on its jagged cliff-crag beyond, and saw again the blink of weapons in the evening light, and heard the distant neigh of a horse, and the notes of a harp on the far-most edge of hearing. ‘How does one come to the gates of this woman-warrior?’ he asked.
    And Ferdia laughed and shook his head. ‘Every morning Skatha comes to us. None of us have ever crossed the chasm.’
    But by now, narrowing his eyes against the arrows of theevening sun, Cuchulain had made out some kind of bridge across the gulf, and so he said, ‘And why would that be? That if there is a bridge for the woman to cross over, you may not cross the other way?’
    â€˜That is called the Bridge of Leaps,’ said Ferdia. ‘Come and look at it.’
    So they went together and stood before the bridge, and it was a single span of rock, its upper surface worn smooth and slippery as an oiled sword blade, and but little broader. And they looked down into the depth of the gulf, where far below the sea tides were swinging to and fro and boiling among the black rocks on which sprawled the shapes of great grey seals and white-fanged walrus.
    â€˜There are two feats which Skatha teaches last of all to the warriors of her training,’ Ferdia said, ‘and one is the thrust of the Gae Bolg, the Belly Spear that no armour may withstand, and the other is the Hero’s Salmon Leap, which is the leap across the bridge. For if a man will step on the end of it, the middle bucks like a killer colt and flings him back, and if he leaps upon the centre, he is most like to miss his footing and plunge down to the rocks and the sea monsters.’
    But Cuchulain was in no mood to wait until morning should bring Skatha out across her bridge, and he said, ‘Yet give me an hour to rest after my journey, and it is in my mind that I can do it.’
    â€˜Don’t be crowing too loudly before your spurs are grown,’ Ferdia said. ‘Besides, the sun will be down in an hour.’
    â€˜There will be a moon, later,’ said Cuchulain.
    And so the two walked back to the bothies, each busy with thoughts of his own.
    Cuchulain