“With pleasure!” I cried; and whipping the rapier from its sheath I vaulted over the stair-rail and fell upon him so heartily that he was driven fairly back among his musket men before he could bare steel and defend himself.
Lord! but there was a scattering among those gaping lookers-on! Never have I seen buyers in the eagerest market so anxious to get to the front—only their front was the rear. With an onset so vigorous and unexpected, I might have cut and thrust my way to the door, if it had not been for the cursed little gray-coated spy, James Askew. But at the charging instant he dodged to get behind me, and I knew better than to leave an enemy of his temper unaccounted for in the rear. My foining to get a side-thrust at the spy gave Castner his chance to draw; and in another breath we were at it, hammer and tongs, Castner striving manfully to press me to the wall, and Dickie Page fighting as a man fights when he knows that his hours are strictly numbered, and who asks no more of this world and his enemies therein than the chance to die while his blood is leaping battle-warm.
It was the cur Askew who ended it, after all, though not as he meant to, I’ll dare swear. In our stamping rushes and thrustings and parryings, Castner and I had him penned in a corner, and at length, in a wide flanconade, my sword’s point touched him on the outward sweep to line. With a yelp like that of a pricked dog, he darted out of his corner and made to get away, rushing blindly into the zone of whistling sword blades.
It was the end of him, as well as of the sword play. He was just in time to catch the swift following thrust with which Castner replied to my attack, and the lieutenant’s blade passed clean through him; through his heart, I think, for he dropped like a stone, and gave only a shiver before his eyes glazed and his jaw fell.
This was my fair chance to kill Lieutenant Charles Castner, of the King’s Own; but I hope we Pages are something better than assassins, even when the blood is hot and we are fighting for our lives. My point went to the floor, and I stepped back to let Castner disengage; then the musketeers flung their pieces aside and made their smothering rush, and I was done.
The lieutenant was considerably out of breath when he pulled his sword from the spy’s body and fell fiercely upon his men, who were mishandling me pretty cruelly.
“Your word that you will not try to escape, Captain Page!” he panted; but I would not give it.
“No; ‘safe bind, safe find,’ is your motto, my good friend,” I said cheerfully, holding out my wrists for the cord.
It galled him to do it, but he would not fail in any part of his duty.
“I have had too much trouble in overtaking you,” he said in extenuation, when the soldiers were tying my hands; with all the riff-raff of idlers turned back now to look on, gaping.