But his point never reached me--for, as his sword glided along mine,
seemingly unopposed, I caught it exactly as Moore had shown me and
wrenched with all the strength of my wrist and arm.
There was a sharp grinding of steel; and then, like a thing alive, the
Duke's sword left his hand, sped through the air and settled, thirty
feet away, point downward in the turf, where it stuck, quivering and
swaying like a reed in the wind.
With a cry of sharp surprise, Lotzen sprang back and watched his sword
as it circled and fell. I moved a step toward him. Then, he turned to
me.
"It seems, Monsieur le Coquin," he said softly, "that I was in error;
and that it is the point of your sword and not the hilt I am to take.
So be it."
He draw himself up to attention, and raised his hand in salute.
"I am waiting," he said calmly.
Ferdinand of Lotzen was, doubtless, a bad lot. Once that night he had
given me to assassination; and, just now, he himself had deliberately
tried to kill me. He deserved no consideration; and, by every law of
justification, could I, then and there, have driven my sword into his
throat. Maybe I wanted to do it, too. We all are something of the
savage at times.
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