The glaciologist had been watching the verbal fencing with mirthful-eyes.

He was enjoying the verbal fencing, although he knew he'd have to be careful not to reveal too much about himself.

There hadn't been many of them recently, but they were still all like this: verbal fencing between people too mistrustful to be rude.

Blade felt more than usually impatient with this sort of verbal fencing.

He felt exhausted and beaten by the verbal fencing that had gone nowhere.

There was even verbal fencing over terms like "market share."

Don't you see that the situation is beyond verbal fencing?

Jason was in no mood to prolong the verbal fencing.

Besides, Blade was getting tired of all this verbal fencing.

Nor did he, through thirty minutes of viciously skillful verbal fencing.