"Oh!" Billy had seen blood dripping from Schneider's left sleeve, and leaving a tiny trail of carmine splotches in the trampled snow. In agony of apprehension, the boy again fairly shouted: "Don't let him down you, Schneider; look out for the next!"
Roque gave the excited lad a muttered order to hold his tongue.
"Ha!" This from Stanislaws. A scarlet seam crossed the forehead of the Cossack, and he wavered for a second, as if partially blinded. Only for a second, though, did his sword arm hesitate. Schneider received another wound, this time close to the throat.
"He's done for," tremulously whispered Henri, wondering why the soldier onlookers did not interfere, and eager to make a saving move himself.
Then, as though a whole row of wine glasses had been riven by a knife stroke, the Cossack's blade, cleft near the haft by a biting downward cut of the saber, fell tinkling at his feet.
This was the last flare of Schneider's waning strength, of which, however, the Cossack was apparently unaware. He did not wait to meet an expected heart thrust from the victor.
With a piercing yell, he turned, waved the sword stump about his head, and leaped far out into the void before him.
Schneider, on hand and knee, game, but all in, as the saying is, mournfully shook his head, and faintly murmured: "He would have had another chance to finish."
Stanislaws, something of a surgeon, stanched the blood welling from the wounds of his comrade, applied bandages, and soon had the fallen fighter on his feet.
The Cossack's mount had disappeared, a fact first noticed by the acute Roque. "Mark you," he predicted, "that riderless horse will be sure to stir up a wasps' nest, and somebody here will get stung if we attempt to hold this position. Schneider's punctures are enough for one day."