"Something caught my throat," he said, in a low apologetic tone and a shamefaced manner. "I must trouble you again," he added to Mayhew.
I needed no more. I had the clue I sought, and the little incident quickened my interest.
Mayhew spun it again, this time with no faulty preface.
"Head," called Livenza, while it was still high in air, and when it came down he could not restrain the impulse to stoop forward eagerly to see the coin as it fell. That action brought his face in a different angle of the light, and on his brow I saw some beads of sweat.
"It is head," said Mayhew. "Colonel Livenza fires first."
A gleam of satisfaction lighted my opponent's face, followed instantly, however, by an expression of such fateful, almost agonising indecision as I have never seen on a man's face, and hope never to see again. It was beyond his control to hide it. He glanced from one to the other of the spots where the pistols showed, then closed his eyes; his brow drew into deep furrows, and he bit his lips and clenched his hands as every muscle and nerve in his body seemed to grow suddenly rigid with the strain. Then, drawing a deep breath through his dilated nostrils, he flung out his hand and pointed toward the pistol on my right and his left; while the deep breath he had drawn escaped in a rush through the trembling lips with a sound that could be heard all over the room.
Captain Pescada threw back the covering cloth, handed Livenza the pistol he had chosen, and pushed the other to me. I left it lying on the table, and the next instant was looking into Livenza's eyes along the barrel of his pistol, held none too steadily within a few feet of my head.
I was conscious for a moment of the four white anxious faces of the men who were watching us with staring eyes and bated breath, and was kept at the tension long enough to feel a wish that Livenza would fire, when the report rang out and I felt the hot blast of the powder in my face, and was dazzled by the flash as I realised that I was unhurt. I heard an oath and a groan of despair from my opponent, and the first object I could see clearly was Livenza, now salt-white, trembling like a man with an ague, and swaying as he clung to the table for support.
"THE REPORT RANG OUT AND I REALIZED THAT I WAS UNHURT."—Page 158.