How is this?"

"My eyes," said Jack; "who'd a thought it; there's a go! Wouldn't he do
for a dummy--to lead a forlorn hope, or to put among the boarders?"

"Here," said Sir Francis, handing a bullet to Henry Bannerworth--"here
is the bullet you shot at me."

Henry looked at it--it was blackened by powder; and then Marchdale
seized it and tried it in the pistol, but found the bullet fitted
Henry's weapon.

"By heavens, it is so!" he exclaimed, stepping back and looking at
Varney from top to toe in horror and amazement.

"D----e," said the admiral, "if I understand this. Why Jack Pringle, you
dog, here's a strange fish."

"On, no! there's plenty on 'um in some countries."

"Will you insist upon another fire, or may I consider you satisfied?"

"I shall object," said Marchdale. "Henry, this affair must go no
further; it would be madness--worse than madness, to fight upon such
terms."

"So say I," said the admiral. "I will not have anything to do with you,
Sir Francis. I'll not be your second any longer. I didn't bargain for
such a game as this. You might as well fight with the man in brass
armour, at the Lord Mayor's show, or the champion at a coronation."

"Oh!" said Jack Pringle; "a man may as well fire at the back of a
halligator as a wamphigher."

"This must be considered as having been concluded," said Mr. Marchdale.

"No!" said Henry.

"And wherefore not?"

"Because I have not received his fire."

"Heaven forbid you should."

"I may not with honour quit the ground without another fire."

"Under ordinary circumstances there might be some shadow of an excuse
for your demand; but as it is there is none. You have neither honour nor
credit to gain by such an encounter, and, certainly, you can gain no
object."

"How are we to decide this affair? Am I considered absolved from the
accusation under which I lay, of cowardice?" inquired Sir Francis
Varney, with a cold smile.

"Why, as for that," said the admiral, "I should as soon expect credit
for fighting behind a wall, as with a man that I couldn't hit any more
than the moon."

"Henry; let me implore you to quit this scene; it can do no good."

At this moment, a noise, as of human voices, was heard at a distance;
this caused a momentary pause, and, the whole party stood still and
listened.

The murmurs and shouts that now arose in the distance were indistinct
and confused.

"What can all this mean?" said Marchdale; "there is something very
str