“I thank you, sir—my remark had reference to your own necessity. Shall we toss up for the word?”
These preliminaries were soon adjusted. The word fell to Carter, and thus gave an advantage to Perkins, as his ear was more familiar than mine with the accents of his friend. We were placed, and the pistol put into my hands, without my uttering a sentence.
“Coolly now, my dear fellow,” said Kingsley in a whisper, as he withdrew from my side;—“wing him at least—but don't burn powder for nothing.”
Scarcely the lapse of a moment followed, when I heard the words “one,” “two,” “three,” in tolerably rapid succession, and, at the utterance of the last, I pulled trigger. My antagonist had done so at the first. His eye was fixed upon mine with deliberate malignity—THAT I clearly saw—but it did not affect my shot. This, I purposely threw away. The skill of my enemy did not correspondend (sic) with his evident desires. I was hurt, but very slightly. His bullet merely raised the skin upon the fleshy part of my right thigh. We kept our places while a conference ensued between the two seconds. Mr. Perkins, through his friend, declared himself unsatisfied unless I apologized, or—in less unpleasant language—explained. This demand was answered by Kingsley with cavalier indifference He came to me with a second pistol. His good-humored visage was now slightly ruffled.
“Clifford!” said he, as he put the weapon into my hand, “you must trifle no longer. This fellow abuses your generosity. He knows, as well as I, that you threw away your fire; and he will play the same game with you, on the same terms, for a month together, Sundays not excepted. I am not willing to stand by and see you risk your life in this manner; and, unless you tell me that you will give him as good as he sends, I leave you on the spot. Will you take aim this time?”
“I will!”
“You promise me then?”
“I do!”
I was conscious of the increased activity of my organ of destructiveness as I said these words. I smiled with a feeling of pleasant bitterness—that spicy sort of malice which you may sometimes rouse in the bosom of the best-natured man in the world, by an attempt to do him injustice. The wound I had received, though very trifling, had no little to do with this determination. It was not unlike such a wound as would be made by a smart stroke of a whip, and the effect upon my blood was pretty much as if it had been inflicted by some such instrument. I was stung and irritated by it, and the pertinacity of my enemy, particularly as he must have seen that my shot was thrown away, decided me to punish him if I could. I did so! I was not conscious that I was hurt myself, until I saw him falling!—I then felt a heavy and numbing sensation in the same thigh which had been touched before. A faintness relieved me from present sensibility, and when I became conscious, I found myself in the carriage, supported by Kingsley and the surgeon, on my way to my lodgings. My wound was a flesh wound only; the ball was soon extracted, and in a few weeks after, I was enabled to move about with scarcely a feeling of inconvenience. My opponent suffered a much heavier penalty. The bone of his leg was fractured, and it was several months before he was considered perfectly safe. The lesson he got made him a sorer and shorter—a wiser, if not a better man; but as I do not now, and did not then, charge myself with the task of bringing about his moral improvement, it is not incumbent upon me to say anything further on this subject. We will leave him to get better as he may.