“I’ll go, child—I’ll go at once,” said the Major. “With Von Dessel, too, as if he could find nobody else to quarrel with but the best swordsman in the garrison. ‘Souls and bodies,’ quoted my grandfather, ‘hath he divorced three.’”
With every stride he took, the Major’s uneasiness was augmented. At any time his anxiety would have been extreme while peril threatened Frank; but now, when he was calculating on him as a companion at many a well-spread table, when they might forget their past miseries, it peculiarly affected him.
“To think,” muttered my grandfather, “that these two madmen should choose a time when everybody is going to be made so happy, by getting plenty to eat, to show their gratitude to Providence by cutting one another’s throats!”
The danger to Owen was really formidable; for, though a respectable swordsman, he was no unusual proficient in the graceful art, while his opponent was not only, as my grandfather had said, the best swordsman in the garrison, but perhaps the best at that time in the army. As a student in Germany he had distinguished himself in some sanguinary duels; and since his arrival in Gibraltar, a Spanish gentleman, a very able fencer, had fallen beneath his arm.
“God grant,” said my grandfather to himself, as he neared the Fives’ Court, “that we may settle this without the perdition of souls. Frank, my dear boy, we could better spare a better man!”
On attempting to enter the Fives’ Court he was stopped by the marker, posted at the door. “It was engaged,” he said, “for a private match.”
“Ay, ay,” said my grandfather, pushing past him; “a pretty match, indeed! Ay, ay—pray God we can stop it!”
Finding the inner door locked, the Major, who was well acquainted with the locality—for, when he had nothing else particular to do, he would sometimes mark for the players for a rubber or two—ascended the stairs to the gallery.
About the centre of the court stood the combatants. All preliminaries had been gone through—for they were stripped to their shirts—and the seconds (one a German, the adjutant of Hardenberg’s regiment—the other, one Lieutenant Rushton, an old hand at these affairs, and himself a fire-eater) stood by, each with a spare sword in his hand. In a corner was the German regimental surgeon, his apparatus displayed on the floor, ready for an emergency. Rushton fully expected Owen to fall, and only hoped he might escape without a mortal wound. Von Dessel himself seemed of the same opinion, standing square and firm as a tower, scarcely troubling himself to assume an attitude, but easy and masterly withal. Both contempt and malice were expressed for his antagonist in his half-shut eyes and the sardonic twist of the corners of his mouth.
“Owen, Owen, my boy!” shouted my grandfather, rushing to the front of the gallery, and leaning over, as the swords crossed—“stop, for God’s sake. You mustn’t fight that swash-buckler! They say he hath been fencer to the Sophy,” roared the Major, in the words of Sir Toby Belch.