“You are wounded, my lord,” said De Wardes, drawing back a step or two.
“Yes, monsieur, but only slightly.”
“Yet you quitted your guard.”
“Only from the first effect of the cold steel, but I have recovered. Let us go on, if you please.” And disengaging his sword with a sinister clashing of the blade, the duke wounded the marquis in the breast.
“A hit?” he said.
“No,” cried De Wardes, not moving from his place.
“I beg your pardon, but observing that your shirt was stained——” said Buckingham.
“Well,” said De Wardes furiously, “it is now your turn.”
And with a terrible lunge, he pierced Buckingham’s arm, the sword passing between the two bones. Buckingham, feeling his right arm paralyzed, stretched out his left, seized his sword, which was about falling from his nerveless grasp, and before De Wardes could resume his guard, he thrust him through the breast. De Wardes tottered, his knees gave way beneath him, and leaving his sword still fixed in the duke’s arm, he fell into the water, which was soon crimsoned with a more genuine reflection than that which it had borrowed from the clouds. De Wardes was not dead; he felt the terrible danger that menaced him, for the sea rose fast. The duke, too, perceived the danger. With an effort and an exclamation of pain he tore out the blade which remained in his arm, and turning towards De Wardes said, “Are you dead, marquis?”
“No,” replied De Wardes, in a voice choked by the blood which rushed from his lungs to his throat, “but very near it.”