Straight as a line for the men that held the captive maids went the henchman, and as they hurriedly released their prey and stood on guard, Mr. Neuchamp could have offered a votary’s prayer to the patron saint of old England’s weaponless gladiators, as he marked the unarmed Anglo-Saxon’s rapid unswerving onset.
Though there, the western mountaineer
Rushed with bare bosom on the spear,
And flung the feeble targe aside,
And with both hands the broadsword plied.
Mr. Windsor so far resembled Donald at Flodden Field, that he trusted chiefly to natural strength and courage. But none the less did he display an amount of coolness and cunning of fence characteristically Australian.
Charging the nearest Frenchman, as he took him to be, and indeed in all future relation so described him, with the velocity of a mallee three-year-old, he feinted with his right hand at the forehead of his foe, and as the Mexican-Spaniard, for such he was, raised his arm for a deadly stab, he suddenly gripped his wrist, catching him full in the face with the ‘terrible left,’ and stretched him senseless and bleeding at his feet. Snatching up the knife, he had but time to parry a stroke which shrewdly scored his right arm, when his other antagonist was upon him. Both men glared at one another with uplifted knives—for a moment; in the next Mr. Windsor swept his antagonist’s outstretched foot from under him with a Cornish wrestler’s trick—a lift—a dull thud, and he lay on his back, with Jack’s knee on his chest and the dangerous knife in the bushman’s belt.
In the meanwhile Miss Frankston, perceiving that the men who had charge of the boat showed no disposition to quit their station, half dragged, half raised Miss Folleton along the path to the verandah steps, halting just within sight of the combatants.
‘Now, do you prefer being dragged up to the house, Von Schätterheims?—by Jove! I shoot you where you stand if you resist,’ inquired Ernest of that nobleman, whom he had mastered after a severe struggle, and whose revolver he now pointed at those classical features, ‘or will you depart in God’s name, and rid us of your presence for ever?’
‘It is Fade,’ said the Count gloomily. ‘He is too strong. My shtar is under an efil influence. I will quid dese accurset lants. Let your man—teufel dat he is with his boxanglais—release my grew, and I go; but stay—I am guildy by your laws; why should you release me?’