But the gun-stock was, as has been said, shattered; and Frank could not have the satisfaction of revenging himself and his comrades for Winch's cowardice with Winch's own gun. So he threw it down, and took up Ellis's, which he found ready loaded and primed.
While he was examining the piece, he remembered the shots which he had taken for spent balls, and bethought him to look around the woods in the direction from which they had come. Raising his eyes above the undergrowth, he beheld a singular phenomenon.
At first, he thought it was a wild animal—a coon, or a wildcat, coming down a tree. Then there were two wildcats, descending together, or preparing to descend. Then the wildcats became two human legs clasped around the trunk, and two human arms appeared enjoying an equally close hug above them. The body to which these visible members appertained was itself invisible, being on the farther side of the trunk.
"That's the chap that was shooting at us!" was Frank's instantaneous conviction.
And now he could plainly discern an object slung across the man's back, as his movements swung it around a little to one side. It was the sharpshooter's rifle.
Frank was so excited that he felt himself trembling—not with fear, but with the very ardor of his ambition.
"Since he has had two shots at me, why shouldn't I have as much as one at him?"
To disable and bring in the rebel who had shot the badge from his arm—what a triumph!
But he was not in a good position for an effective shot, even if he could have made up his mind to fire at a person who, though without doubt an enemy, was not at the moment defending himself. It seemed, after all, too dreadful a thing deliberately to kill a man.
Frank's excitement did not embarrass his faculties in the least, but only rendered them all the more keenly alive and vigilant. It took him but a moment to decide what to do. Through the swamp he ran with a lightness and ability of which in calmer moments he would have been scarcely capable. The exigency of the occasion inspired him. Such leaps he took over miry places! so safely and swiftly be ran the length of an old mossy log! so nimbly he avoided the undergrowth! and so suddenly he arrived at last at the tree the rebel was descending!