“Very well, then. I’m ready.”
A minute later the word was given and we engaged. I had no lethargy left now. The last vestige of it vanished when I felt his blade pressing mine and met his scowl of positively devilish hate. I needed no more than a glance into his eyes to see that he had come out to kill me, and that my life depended upon my skill and coolness.
But he was either too ill or too angry to be really dangerous. He attacked me furiously from the start; but he fought so wildly that I found myself quite able to hold him in check, and I let him exert himself to the utmost with the sure knowledge that in such a state he could not keep it up long.
I think he had reckoned upon being able to treat me with the same contempt as a swordsman as he had treated me as a man the night before; and when he found out his mistake, it provoked his rage until he fought with the frenzy of a madman.
Had he been himself and not so furiously reckless, I think he would have had an easy enough victory, for he had a hundred tricks of fence where I had none.
He seemed to realise something of this, too, when we had been hard at it for some time, for he began to fight with less vehemence and much more wariness.
But he had wasted his strength by that time; and to waste it still further, I commenced to push matters a bit from my side. He began to breathe hard. The pressure of his blade against mine weakened. Twice his foot slipped and he exposed himself dangerously; and then I knew I was going to beat him.
I took no advantage of his slips. The man was ill, or drunk, or suffering from the effects of drink; and I could not bring myself even to wound him.
I just kept to my tactics of wearing him down, defending myself when he attacked me and pressing him whenever he sought to ease off to get his breath back.
At last it became little more than a burlesque. He was so winded and exhausted and so unsteady on his legs that he could scarcely continue the fight, scarcely hold his sword, indeed; and when I realised this I made a big, pressing effort, and seizing my moment, whipped his sword out of his hand and left him gasping impotently in dismay and breathlessness and lurching like a discomfited, angry fool, until he began to clamour to renew the fight.