By Right of Sword

by Arthur W. Marchmont

But he was not to be compared with me. In two minutes I knew precisely his tactics and at every point I could outfight him. I had no need even to exert myself. After a few passes, all my old love of the art came back to me and all my old skill; and when he made his deadliest and trickiest lunges I parried them without an effort, and could have countered with fatal effect.

I wished to get the fullest measure of his skill, however, and for this reason did not attempt to touch him for some minutes. Then an idea occurred to me. I would prove to the men with us that I had no real wish to avoid the fight. Intentionally I let my adversary touch my left arm, drawing a little blood.

They stopped us instantly; and then came the question whether enough had been done to satisfy the demands of honour. Had I chosen, I could without actual cowardice have declared the thing finished: but I intended them all to understand that I had to the full as keen an appetite as my opponent for the business. I was peremptory therefore in my demand to go on.

In the pause I made my plan. I would cover my adversary with ridicule by outfencing him at all points: play with him, in fact; and give him a hundred little skin wounds to shew him and the rest how completely he had been at my mercy.

I did it with consummate ease. My sword point played round him as an electric spark will dart about a magnet, and he was like a child in his feeble efforts to follow its dazzling swiftness. Scarcely had we engaged before I had flicked a piece of skin from his cheek. The next time it was from his sword arm. Then from his neck, and after that from his other cheek; until there was no part of his flesh in view which had not a drop of blood to mark that my sword point had been there. The man was mad with baffled and impotent rage.

Then I put an end to it. After the last rest I put the whole of my energy and skill into my play, and pressed him so hard that any one of the onlookers could see I could have run him through the heart half a dozen times: and at the end of it I disarmed him with a wrench that was like to break his wrist.

To do the man justice, he had pluck. He made sure I meant to kill him, but he faced me resolutely enough when I raised my sword and put the point right at his heart.

"One word," said I, sternly. "I have put this indignity on you because of the insolent message you sent to me by Lieutenant Essaieff. But for that I would simply have disarmed you at once and made an end of the thing. Now, remember me by this...." I raised my sword and struck him with the flat side of it across the face, leaving an ugly red trail.

Then I turned on my heel and went to where my seconds stood, lost in staring amazement at what I had done. I put on my clothes in silence; and as I glanced about me I saw that the scene had created a powerful impression upon everybody present.