instant on guard.

'Take care!' I answered. 'You have twenty-three against you!'

A swift lunge was his only answer. I parried it, and thrust, and we fell
to work. We had not exchanged half a dozen blows, however, before I saw
that I should need all the advantage which my mask and greater caution
gave me. I had met my match, and it might be something more; but that
for a time it was impossible to tell. He had the longer weapon, and I
the longer reach. He preferred the point, after the new Italian fashion,
and I the blade. He was somewhat flushed with wine, while my arm had
scarcely recovered the strength of which illness had deprived me.

On the other hand, excited at the first by the cries of his backers,
he played rather wildly; while I held myself prepared, and keeping up a
strong guard, waited cautiously for any opening or mistake on his part.

The crowd round us, which had hailed our first passes with noisy cries
of derision and triumph, fell silent after a while, surprised and taken
aback by their champion's failure to spit me at the first onslaught. My
reluctance to engage had led them to predict a short fight and an easy
victory.

Convinced of the contrary, they began to watch each stroke with bated
breath; or now and again, muttering the name of Jarnac, broke into
brief exclamations as a blow more savage than usual drew sparks from our
blades, and made the rafters ring with the harsh grinding of steel on
steel.

The surprise of the crowd, however, was a small thing compared with that
of my adversary. Impatience, disgust, rage and doubt chased one another
in turn across his flushed features. Apprised that he had to do with
a swordsman, he put forth all his power. With spite in his eyes he
laboured blow on blow, he tried one form of attack after another, he
found me equal, if barely equal, to all. And then at last there came a
change. The perspiration gathered on his brow, the silence disconcerted
him; he felt his strength failing under the strain, and suddenly, I
think, the possibility of defeat and death, unthought of before, burst
upon him. I heard him groan, and for a moment he fenced wildly. Then
he again recovered himself. But now I read terror in his eyes, and knew
that the moment of retribution was at hand. With his back to the table,
and my point threatening his breast, he knew at last what those others
had felt!

He would fain have stopped to breathe, but I would not let him though my
blows also