Not a muscle of Durzil’s face moved, not a sinew of his frame quivered, yet he was shot through the body, mortally—and he knew it.
“Swords!” he cried, “swords!”
And bounding forward, he met the youth midway, and at the first collision, sparks flew from the well-tempered blades.
It was no even conflict, no trial of skill—three deadly passes of the sailor, as straight and almost as swift as lightning, with a blade so strong, and a wrist so adamantine, that no slight of Jasper’s could divert them, were sent home in tierce—one in his throat, “That for your lie!” shouted Durzil; a second in the sword arm, “That for your coward blow!” a third, which clove the very cavity of his heart asunder, “That for your life!”
Ten seconds did not pass, from the first crossing of their blades until Jasper lay dead upon the floor, flooding his own hearth-stone with his life-blood.
Durzil leaned on his avenging blade, and looked down upon the dead.
“It is done! it is done just in time! But just! for I am sped likewise. May the Great God have mercy on me, and pardon me my sins, as I did this thing not in hatred, but in justice and in honor! Ah—I am sick—sick!”
And he dropped down into the arm-chair in which Jasper was sitting as he entered; and though he could hardly hold his head up for the deadly faintness, and the reeling of his eyes and brain, by a great effort he drew out the marriage record from his breast—Jasper’s ball had pierced it, and it was dappled with his own life-blood—and smoothed it out fairly, and spread it on the board before him.
Then he fell back, and closed his eyes, and lay for a long time motionless; but the slow, sick throbbing of his heart showed that he was yet alive, though passing rapidly away.
Once he raised his dim eyes, and murmured, “They tarry—they tarry very long. I fear me, they will come too late.”