Blood ground his teeth to see Jeremy lose the only advantage he possessed over the sometime fencing–master who was bent on murdering him. Yet the end did not come as swiftly as he expected. Jeremy had certain advantages of reach and vigour. But these did not account for the delay, nor yet did the fact that the fencing–master may have been a little rusty from lack of recent practice. Tondeur played a closely circling blade which found openings everywhere in the other's wide and clumsy guard. Yet he did not go in to finish. Was he deliberately playing with his victim as cat with mouse, or was it perhaps that, standing a little in awe of Blood and of possible consequences should he kill Pitt outright, he aimed merely at disabling him?
The spectators, beholding what they beheld, were puzzled by the delay. They were puzzled still more when Tondeur again broke ground, so as to place his back to the sun and turn his helpless opponent into the position of disadvantage in which Tondeur had erstwhile found himself. To the onlookers this seemed a refinement of cruelty.
Blood, who now directly faced Tondeur, picked up in that moment one of the brass candlesticks from the table beside him. None observed him, every eye being upon the combatants. Blood alone appeared entirely to have lost interest in them. His attention was bestowed entirely upon the candlestick. So as to examine the socket intended for the candle, he raised the object until its broad saucer–like base was vertical. At that moment, for no apparent reason, Tondeur's blade faltered in its guard, and failed to deflect a clumsy thrust with which Jeremy was mechanically in the act of countering. Meeting no opposition, Jeremy's blade drove on until some inches of it came out through Tondeur's back.
Almost before the amazed company had realized this sudden and unexpected conclusion, Captain Blood was on his knees beside the prostrate man. He called for water and clean linen, the surgeon in him now paramount whilst Jeremy — the most amazed in that amazed crowd — stood foolishly looking on beside him.
Whilst Blood was dressing the wound, Tondeur recovered from his momentary swoon he stared with eyes that slowly focussed the man who was bending over him.
«Assassin!» he said through his teeth, and then his head lolled limply on his shoulder once more.
«On the contrary,» said Blood, his finger deftly swathing the body which Ventadour was supporting, «I'm your preserver.» And to the company he announced: «He will not die of this, for all that it went through him.. With luck he'll be ruffling it again within the month. But he'd best not be moved from here for some days, and he'll need care.»
Jeremy never knew how he found himself once more aboard the Arabella. The events of the afternoon were dim to him as the transactions of a dream. He had looked, as he conceived, into the grim face of death, and yet he had survived. That evening at supper in the great cabin he made philosophy upon it.
«It serves,» he said, «to show the advantages of never losing heart or admitting defeat in an encounter. I might so easily have been slain to–day; and it would have been simply and solely by a preconception: the preconception that Tondeur was the better swordsman.»
«It is still possible that he was,» said Blood.