He made a sudden leap backward and vanished quickly around the corner of the building, passing several Frenchmen, and in the confusion reached the battlements before I could stop him, and with a laugh sprang out into space. Without so much as looking, I leaped after him into the mud and water of the river bank. I landed fair up to my knees and fell over in the water. For a moment I thought my legs had been driven into my body, but managed to get to my feet in time to see my enemy rushing for the thicket. In a second I was after him and plunged through the bushes guided by the gleam of his morion. All around us were shouts of French and Indians and once we passed a half-score red men who were dancing around a poor wretch tied to a tree. They saw us go by and let fly a shower of arrows at both, thinking that I too was an escaping Spaniard. But they did not follow us; they were enjoying too horrid a pleasure to leave. We ran thus for some distance, when, reaching a level space of ground, De Baçan stopped suddenly, awaiting my coming. He leaned with both hands upon his blade, breathing heavily. His face was purple from exertion and the sweat poured from his forehead down his cheeks and into his beard. I was hard put myself for breath and came forward cautiously.
“Again! Señor Pirato,” he sneered, with a kind of a laugh.
“For the last time,—Señor Spaniard!” I said approaching.
“For the last time? Ah! then you do grant I am the better skilled at sword-play?”
“Let us settle the matter at once,” said I, bringing my point into line.
“One moment!” he said craftily. “When I kill you, what will become of Mademoiselle?”
I saw his object. He sought to unsteady my nerves. But I only laughed at him.
“Mademoiselle is in the hands of her friends, Señor.—Come now! Enough! You have your wind. Fall to, or I will run you through!”
I threw off my morion to keep my brow cool. And while in the very act of tossing it aside he leaped for me, engaging with such incomparable swiftness that I broke ground and gave back ten—twenty paces—under his fierce assault. I held my own with great trouble. But he saw no sign of it, upon my face and it is my pride that I ever looked coldly in his eyes, fearless and confident. Once he grazed my arm and with flashing eye sprang forward to follow his advantage; but I met him with so shrewd a guard and thrust that he drew back, looking at me in surprise. We heard indistinctly the cries of the soldiers and the Indians at the fort, and now and then a wild yell would start the echoes in the forest near us. But we fought on, our eyes looking into each other’s, glittering and more piercing even than the swords we wielded. Shouting was now most plainly to be heard in the direction from which we had come. I heard Job Goddard’s whistle and a cheery cry.