I had again levelled my revolver, hoping to get in another shot; but before I could take proper aim or press the trigger, my invaluable little weapon was struck from my hand by a blow from the cutlass of the man who had singled me out for attack. Most fortunately my hand escaped injury, for I was quite sure that my opponent had fully intended to sever it from my arm at the wrist. Stepping back a pace, I hurriedly shifted my sword from my left hand to my right, and brought it to the first guard, keeping my eyes warily fixed upon the dark, cruel orbs of my savage-looking antagonist. It flashed like lightning through my brain that, by great good luck, I was not pitted against an expert swordsman, for I saw him again raise his cutlass in order to deliver a swashing blow instead of making a straight and direct lunge at my heart.
“I’ll have him now!” I muttered, feeling all the self-confidence of a youngster who had not reached his seventeenth year; and with great promptitude I shortened my sword and drove the sharp point straight at his breast, just as he had unwarily left it exposed by raising his brawny arm to cut me down. I ought to have got that point home. By all the laws of fence my antagonist’s life was at my disposal, and he should have been stretched upon the sward at my feet; but as ill luck would have it—we always attribute our misfortunes to ill luck, don’t we?—I slipped on a patch of wet grass, and fell prostrate at the very feet of my foe, my nose coming into violent contact with a hard mound of earth.
Although this contretemps was most unexpected, and the shock considerable, I had presence of mind enough to keep a firm grip of my sword. One does not lightly part with a firm and trusty friend.
But oh, how well I remember, even at this distance of time, the awful thought passing swiftly through my brain, “I’m helplessly in the power of my antagonist, and he’ll assuredly kill me.”
A boy, however, does not give in while there’s a chance left, slight and remote as it may be, and even as the thought recorded above flashed through my mind I struggled to rise. As I turned my head I saw, to my horror, that my foe, with a cruel and exultant smile on his lips, was on the point of running me through with a downward stabbing blow. It was impossible to avoid this thrust in my helpless position, and I felt an icy feeling of despair at my heart. Then the sharp crack of a revolver—to my intense astonishment—cleft the air, and the next moment the fellow who had been so intent upon finishing me off fell across me with a terrific thud, and I lost consciousness from the violence of the shock.
CHAPTER IV.
WE RETURN ON BOARD.
It was not long before I recovered my senses. When I did so, I found that I was stretched upon the ground, and that the surgeon was bending over me bathing my temples with water.
“That’s right, youngster!” he cried encouragingly; “I knew you wouldn’t take long to come round, though Balfour declared you were shamming just to excite our sympathy.”
Memory returned in a flash.
I sat up without assistance, and gazed about me with great curiosity.