"The reckoning is not to-night!"
"Bad form, Sarde. Melodrama. You mean well but you're rotten in the part. You should say, 'The r-r-reckoning is to-night! Ha! Ha!' That's how the villain talks. If you live, you can blame the rebels, and say the snipers got me, see? We have our revolvers, and so—" What more could he want?
"Constable," he played up another excuse. "I hold Her Majesty's commission. You forget yourself."
"Ah! Let us be calm. José Maria Sebastian Sant Iago de la Mancha y O'Brien consents to waive the difference of rank." I raised my hat and bowed. "Come, Sarde, we know that you're a coward and dueling is forbidden and all that, but never mind. For once you shall behave exactly like a man. Brace up!" I struck him hard and harder across the face. "You—really—must—understand. At fifteen paces we turn, and as I give the word we fire, and keep on firing. No? Now don't disappoint me, please, I beg you. Have you no inside? Are you an empty pretense? Nombre de Dios! What have you done with your manhood?"
"I've told you already that officers can't possibly fight with—"
"With me, señor? Haven't I explained? The Marquis de las Alpuxarras consents to waive the difference of rank, and meet a peasant. You scrambled skunk, take your gun! I insist. I command! Now you're armed, and at the word I shoot. I step back ten paces and at the word three, I fire. One! Two!—"
Sangre de Cristo! The beastly cad fired at "Two," and there was I clutching a burning pain in my gun arm above the elbow.
"What the devil do you mean," I asked him, "by firing before I gave the word, eh? I'll smack your beastly head!"
He fired twice more while I rushed him. Then, with a swinging left-hander, I got the point of his chin, and he went down.
A gentleman must always think for others before he thinks for himself, but Sarde being attended to, I had time to look around.