Five minutes passed, and the smile which at first had been upon his face died away. The great beads of sweat began to gather upon his forehead, as he saw his every trick and maneuver met easily, without an effort; and how fresh I was, and knew that he was rapidly exhausting himself.
Another little trick he tried, but I read what was coming in his eyes, even before he thrust, and met him, parried his blade, and thrusting back, laid open his cheek—the first time that I had drawn blood.
Then slowly I began to advance towards him, thrusting faster, faster, faster—surrounding him with a flaming wall of steel, which, try as he might, he could not penetrate. Backwards—backwards I pressed him.
It was a grim, weird scene. The white, bare walls of the cave lit up by the gleam of one little candle; the shadows coming and going upon the sides, as the air from above flared the wick of the candle. Now we were in the light; now in darkness.
The wind was rising outside; already it wailed and moaned, like the souls of the lost. There was not a sound to break the stillness that reigned throughout the cave, save only that—for we had fought in grim silence—only the sound of our feet upon the stones, as we moved and turned hither and thither, and the quick panting of our hot breath.
There, within the walls of the cavern, we fought out the last hard battle, that sooner or later, in some guise or other, comes to all of mortal flesh; that grim, silent struggle in darkness and agony, and in that despair that wrings the heart, as we run the last race, with Life in the balance, and the specter, Death, holding in his fleshless hand the scales.
I could feel his presence that night, as he stalked about us, his garments almost touching us, as we struggled to and fro—shut off from the world, with only the feeble rays of one little candle. Life seemed far away and unreal; Death seemed near and omnipresent.
Strange thoughts crossed my mind, as I cut and thrust at the grim pirate. I recalled how my mother had looked, twenty years ago, as she lay in state in the great hall at Richmond Castle. My years seemed to fall from me as a mantle, and I was again the little boy, innocent and fresh, as, holding my nurse's hand, I looked down upon the cold, waxen features of one whom I had known and loved.
I remembered the thrill of fear—or was it only dread of the unknown?—that filled my mind, as I looked upon the change that had been wrought by the hand of the great destroyer. The calm, serene features, lovely with a beauty not of earth; with that look of majesty which death brings to the face of mortals, as they lie wrapped in the embrace of the last foe.
It is as if he would erase the lines and wrinkles that sorrow and care had wrought—which the toil and pain of this cold sphere had imprinted upon that patient face—and instead would imprint upon its calm lineaments that great mystery which none but the immortal can know.