After Guy had made a careful toilette, at the special request of his principal they started, and in forty minutes were on the ground. Levinge and his second, with the surgeon, arrived almost immediately; the former stood somewhat apart, keeping the lower part of his face carefully muffled.
It was a dull, chill morning; the sky of a steely-gray, without a promise of a gleam from the sun, which had risen somewhere, but was reserving himself for better times. There was a sort of desultory wind blowing, just strong enough at intervals to bring the moist brown leaves sullenly down.
After the pistols had been scientifically loaded, the seconds placed their men fifteen yards apart—with such known shots it was not worth while shortening the distance.
The sensations of ordinary mortals under such circumstances are somewhat curious. Very few are afraid, I think; but one has an impression that one's own proportions are becoming sensibly developed—"swelling wisibly," in fact, like the lady at the Pickwickian tea-fight—while those of our adversary diminish in a like ratio, so that he does not appear near so fair a mark as he did a few minutes ago. But, with all this, there is a quickening of the pulse not unpleasurable—something like the excitement of the "four to the seven" chance at hazard, when you are backing the In for a large stake.
I do not believe Mohun felt any thing of this sort. It was not his own life, but his adversary's death he was playing for; the other was busy, too, with still darker thoughts and purposes.
"Listen," Guy said in French; "M. de Rosny gives the signal, un, deux, trois; if either fires before the last is fully pronounced, it is murder." He looked sharply at Levinge, but the latter seemed studiously to avoid meeting his eye. Guy felt very uncomfortable and very savage.
The men stood opposite to one another like black marble statues, neither showing a speck of color which might serve as a point de mire, each turning only a side-front to his opponent.
De Rosny pronounced the two first words of the signal in a clear, deliberate voice; the last left his lips almost in a shriek, for, before it was half syllabled, his principal fired.
Quick as the movement was, it was anticipated; as Levinge's hand stirred, Mohun made a half-face to the right, and looked his enemy straight between the eyes. That sudden change of position, or the consciousness of detection, probably unsettled the practiced aim, for the ball, that would have drilled Ralph through the heart, only scored a deep furrow in his side.
No one could have guessed that he was touched; he brought his pistol to the level just as coolly as he would have done in the shooting-gallery, and, after the discharge, dropped his hand with measured deliberation. Before the smoke had curled a yard upward, Horace Levinge sprang into the air, and, with out-stretched arms, fell crashing down upon the grass—a bullet through his brain.