“Then: One, two—”
The last word was lost in the report of my pistol, which went off at the instant. For a second the flash and smoke obstructed my view; but the moment after I saw Trevyllian stretched upon the ground, with his friend kneeling beside him. My first impulse was to rush over, for now all feeling of enmity was buried in most heartfelt anxiety for his fate; but as I was stepping forward, O’Shaughnessy called out, “Stand fast, boy, he’s only wounded!” and the same moment he rose slowly from the ground, with the assistance of his friend, and looked with the same wild gaze around him. Such a look! I shall never forget it; there was that intense expression of searching anxiety, as if he sought to trace the outlines of some visionary spirit as it receded before him. Quickly reassured, as it seemed, by the glance he threw on all sides, his countenance lighted up, not with pleasure, but with a fiendish expression of revengeful triumph, which even his voice evinced as he called out: “It’s my turn now.”
I felt the words in their full force, as I stood silently awaiting my death wound. The pause was a long one. Twice did he interrupt his friend, as he was about to give the word, by an expression of suffering, pressing his hand upon his side, and seeming to writhe with torture; and yet this was mere counterfeit.
O’Shaughnessy was now coming forward to interfere and prevent these interruptions, when Trevyllian called out in a firm tone, “I’m ready!” At the words, “One, two!” the pistol slowly rose; his dark eye measured me coolly, steadily; his lip curled; and just as I felt that my last moment of life had arrived, a heavy sound of a horse galloping along the rocky causeway seemed to take off his attention. His frame trembled, his hand shook, and jerking upwards his weapon, the ball passed high above my head.
“You bear me witness I fired in the air,” said Trevyllian, while the large drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead, and his features worked as if in a fit.
“You saw it, sir; and you, Beaufort, my friend, you also. Speak! Why will you not speak?”
“Be calm, Trevyllian; be calm, for Heaven’s sake! What’s the matter with you?”
“The affair is then ended,” said Baker, “and most happily so. You are, I hope, not dangerously wounded.”