With a mighty effort he recovered his footing. Clink! clank! Down swept Mason’s glittering steel. Another lock. A rapid disengagement; and, ere Ephraim could retreat, the long blade lunged straight at his face.
The Grizzly dodged; but the sharp point, driven by the strong, angry arm behind it, found its way through his coat, and ploughed up the muscles of his shoulder. The pain drove him wild, and with a roar of rage he ran in upon his foe, careless of his own exposure, and raising his long rifle by the barrel, brought it smashing down upon the bare, defenceless head.
Under that frightful stroke Sergeant Mason dropped his weapon, reeled from side to side like a drunken man, and dropped to earth as one dead.
CHAPTER XIII.
HOW THE DESPATCH WAS BROUGHT TO STONEWALL JACKSON.
While this frightful battle raged, Lucius stood some little distance off, in an agony of apprehension for the safety of his friend. At the first clank of the meeting steel he had risen to his feet, and strained his eager eyes to see what was about to happen; but, even though he drew a little nearer, he could distinguish nothing clearly. Only in the dusk a pair of tall forms dashed from right to left, or bounded from side to side, meeting, recoiling, and meeting again. But if he could not see, he could hear; and at each jarring clank of the clashing bayonets his heart leaped, and his hair rose on his head, for he could not believe that Ephraim would win the fight. Oh for a gun! he thought, as he ran wildly backwards and forwards, groping along the ground, in the hope that he might come upon some straggler’s discarded piece. All at once he heard shouts and the noise of rushing footsteps. From the river bank, from the woods, from the pickets behind him—from every direction—men were hastening to the scene of the conflict. Then that furious cry from the Grizzly, and the dull crash as the sergeant fell under his powerful stroke. Finally silence for a little space around the combatants.
Lucius did not know which had fallen: he could just see that one was down—that was all—and his fears told him that it must be Grizzly. A dull, apathetic feeling stole over him. He did not try to move. He knew that in a few minutes more he must be a prisoner, and he did not care. A mournful voice seemed to chant in his ears, slow and solemn as a dirge, ‘The Grizzly is dead! the Grizzly is dead!’ And all concern for himself vanished in the presence of this overwhelming sorrow.
Then, as he stood, the sound of the well-known voice thrilled him like an electric shock, jarring his whole frame with the one pregnant monosyllable, ‘Run!’ And, without stopping to question or to reason, he turned his face and fled. Fled at first madly, unthinkingly, right in the teeth of the advancing enemy. He had no knowledge of Ephraim’s whereabouts—whether he was ahead of him or behind him. He was alive—that was just enough then—and on went Lucius like the wind.