Picot's lessons; for
again and yet again I foiled that lunge of the unscrupulous swordsman
till I heard my adversary swearing, between clinched teeth. He
retreated. I followed. By a dexterous spring he put himself under
cover of the woods, leaving me in the open. My only practice in
swordsmanship had been with M. Picot, and it was not till long years
after that I minded how those lessons seemed to forestall and counter
the moves of that ambushed assassin. But the baffling thing was that
my enemy's moves countered mine in the very same way.
He had not seen my face, for my back was turned when he came up, and my
face in the shade when I whirled. But I stood between the dark and the
fire. Every motion of mine he could forecast, while I could but parry
and retreat, striving in vain to lure him out, to get into the dark, to
strike what I could not see, pushed back and back till I felt the rush
that aims not to disarm but to slay.
Our weapons rang with a glint of green lightnings. A piece of steel
flew up. My rapier had snapped short at the hilt. A cold point was at
my throat pressing me down and back as the foil had caught me that
night in M. Picot's house. To right, to left, I swerved, the last
blind rushes of the fugitive man.
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