CHAPTER XXIV
THE DUEL
Cleggett took Wilton Barnstable by the sleeve and drew him towardsLoge, who, still seated on the deck with his long legs stretched out infront of him, was now yawning with a cynical affectation of boredom.
"I wish you to act as my second in this affair," said Cleggett to thedetective, "and I suggest that either Mr. Ward or Mr. Bard perform alike office for Mr. Black."
Loge shrugged his shoulders, and said with a sneer:
"A second, eh? We seem to be doing a great deal of arranging for avery small amount of fighting."
"I suggest," said Wilton Barnstable, "that a night's rest would bequite in order for both principals."
Loge broke in quickly, with studied insolence: "I object to the delay.Mr. Cleggett might find some excuse for changing his mind overnight.Let us, if you please, begin at once."
"It was not I who suggested the delay," said Cleggett, haughtily.
"Then give us the pistols," cried Loge, with a sudden, grim ferocity inhis voice, "and let's make an end of it!"
"We fight with swords," said Cleggett. "I am the challenged party."
"Ho! Swords!" cried Loge, with a harsh, jarring laugh. "A bout withthe rapiers, man to man, eh? Come, this is better and better! I maygo to the chair, but first I will spit you like a squab on a skewer, mylittle nut!" And then he said again, with a shout of gusty mirth, anda clanking of his manacles: "Swords, eh? By God! The little man saysSWORDS!"
Wilton Barnstable drew Cleggett to one side.
"Name pistols," he said. "For God's sake, Cleggett, name pistols! IfI had had any idea that you were going to demand rapiers I should havewarned you before."
Cleggett was amused at the great detective's anxiety. "It appears thatthe fellow handles the rapier pretty well, eh?" he said easily.
"Cleggett----" began Barnstable. And then he paused and groaned andmopped his brow. Presently he controlled his agitation and continued."Cleggett," he said, "the man is an expert swordsman. I have been onhis trail; I know his life for years past. He was once a maitred'armes. He gave lessons in the art."
"Yes?" said Cleggett, laughing and flexing his wrist. "I am glad tohear that! It will be really interesting then."
"Cleggett," said Barnstable, "I beg of you--name pistols. This is theman who invented that diabolical thrust with which Georges Clemenceaulaid low so many of his political opponents. If you must go on withthis mad duel, name pistols!"
"Barnstable," said Cleggett, "I know what I am about, believe me. Youranxiety does me little honor, but I am willing to suppose that you arenot deliberately insulting, and I pass it over. I intend to kill thisman. It is a duty which I owe to society. And as for therapier--believe me, Barnstable, I am no novice. And my blood tinglesand my soul aches with the desire to expunge that man from life with myown hand. Come, we have talked enough. There is a case of swords inthe cabin. Will you do me the favor to bring them on deck?"
Loge's irons were unlocked. He rose to his feet and stretched himself.He removed his coat and waistcoat. Then he took off his shirt,revealing the fact that he wore next his skin a long-sleeved undershirtof red flannel.
Cleggett began to imitate him. But as the commander of the Jasper B.began to pull his shirt over his head he heard a little scream.Everyone turned in the direction from which it had emanated. Theybeheld Miss Genevieve Pringle perched upon the top of the cabin,whither she had mounted by means of a short ladder. This lady, perhapsnot quite aware of the possibly sanguinary character of the spectacleshe was about to witness, had, nevertheless, sensed the fact that aspectacle was toward. Miss Pringle had with her a handsome lorgnette.
"Madam," said Cleggett, hastily pulling his shirt back on again andapproaching the cabin, "did you cry out?"
"Mr.--er--Cleggett," said Miss Pringle, pursing her lips, "if you willkindly hold the ladder for me I think I will descend and retire at onceto the cabin."
"As you wish," said Cleggett politely, complying with her wish, but ata loss to comprehend her.
"I beg you to believe, Mr. Cleggett," said Miss Pringle, averting herface and flushing painfully, while she turned the lorgnette about andabout with embarrassed fingers, "I beg you to believe that in electingto witness this spectacle I had no idea of its exceedingly informalnature."
With these words she passed into the cabin, with the air of one who hassustained a mortal insult.
"Ef you was to ask me what she's tryin' to get at," piped up Cap'nAbernethy, "I'd say it's her belief that it ain't proper for gents tosword each other with their shirts off. She's shocked, Miss Pringleis."
"In great and crucial moments," said Cleggett soberly, pulling off hisshirt again and picking up a sword, "we may dispense with the minorconventions without apology."
Loge chose a weapon with the extreme of care and particularity, tryingthe hang and balance of several of them. He looked well to the weight,bent the blade in his hands to test the spring and temper, tried thepoint upon his thumb. He handled the rapier as if he had found an oldfriend again after a long absence; he looked around upon his enemieswith a sort of ferocious, bantering gayety.
"And now," said Loge, "if this is to be a duel indeed, Mr. Cleggett andI will need plenty of room, I suggest that the rest of you retire tothe bulwarks and give us the deck to ourselves."
"For my part," said Cleggett, "I order it."
"And," said Wilton Barnstable, drawing his pistol, "Mr. Black willplease note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall bewatching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel Ishall riddle him with bullets."
"Come, come," said Loge, "all this conversation is a waste of time!"
"That is my opinion also," said Cleggett.
They saluted formally, and engaged their blades.
With Cleggett, swordsmanship was both a science and an art. Andsomething more. It was also a passion. A good swordsman can be made;a superior swordsman may be born; the real masters are both born andmade. It was so with Cleggett. His interest in fencing had been keenfrom his early boyhood. In his teens he had acquired unusual practicalskill without great theoretical knowledge. Then he had recognized theart for what it is, the most beautiful game on earth, and had made aprofound and thorough study of it; it appealed to his imagination.
He became, in a way, the poet of the foil.
Cleggett seldom fenced publicly, and then only under an assumed name;he abhorred publicity. But there was not a teacher in New York Citywho did not know him for a master. They brought him their half workedout visions of new combinations, new thrusts; he perfected them, andsimplified, or elaborated, and gave back the finished product.
They were the workmen, the craftsmen, the men of talent; he was theoriginator, the genius.
And he was especially lucky in not having been tied down, in hisyounger years, to one national tradition of the art. The limitationsof the French, the Spanish, the Italian, or the Austrian schools hadnot enslaved him in youth and hampered the free development of hisindividuality. He had studied them all; he chose from them all theirsuperiorities; their excellences he blended into a system of his own.
It might be called the Cleggett System.
The Frenchman is an intellectual swordsman; the basis of his art is athorough knowledge of its mathematics. Upon this foundation hesuperimposes a structure of audacity. But he often falls into oneerror or another, for all his mental brilliancy. He may become rigidlyformal in his practice, or, in a revolt from his own formalism, beseduced into a display of showy, sensational tricks that are all verywell in the studio but dangerous to their practitioner on the actualdueling ground.
The Italian, looser, freer, less formal, more individual in his style,springing from a line of forbears who have preferred the thrust to thecut, the point to the edge, for centuries, is a more instinctive andless intellectual swordsman than the Frenchman. It is in his blood; heuses his rapier with a wild and angry grace that is feline.
The Fr
enchman, even when he is thoroughly serious in his desire toslay, loves a duel for its own sake; he is never free from the thoughtof the picture he is making; the art, the science, the practicalcleverness, appeal to him independently of the bloodshed.
The Italian thinks of but one thing; to kill. He will take a severewound to give a fatal one. The French are the best fencers in theworld; the Italians the deadliest duelists.
Cleggett, as has been said, knew all the schools without being theslave of any of them.
He brought his sword en tierce; Loge's blade met his with strength anddelicacy. The strength Cleggett was prepared for. The delicacysurprised him. But he was too much the master, too confident of hisown powers, to trifle. He delivered one of his favorite thrusts; itwas a stroke of his own invention; three times out of five, in yearspast, it had carried home the button of his foil to his opponent'sjacket. It was executed with the directness and rapidity of a flash oflightning.
But Loge parried it with a neatness which made Cleggett open his eyes,replying with a counter so shrewd and close, and of such a dartingferocity, that Cleggett, although he met it faultlessly, neverthelessgave back a step.
"Ah," cried Loge, showing his yellow teeth in a grin, "so the littleman knows that thrust!"
"I invented it," said Cleggett.
With the word he pressed forward and, making a swift and dazzlingfeint, followed it with two brilliant thrusts, either of which wouldhave meant the death of a tyro. The first one Loge parried; the secondtouched him; but it gave him nothing more than a scratch.Nevertheless, the smile faded from Loge's face; he gave ground in histurn before this rapid vigor of attack; he measured Cleggett with a newglance.
"You are touched, I think," said Cleggett, meditating a freshcombination, "and I am glad to see you drop that ugly pretense at agrin. You have no idea how the sight of those yellow teeth of yours,which you were evidently never taught to brush when you were a littleboy, offends a person of any refinement."
Loge's answer was a sudden attempt to twist his blade aroundCleggett's; followed by a direct thrust, as quick as light, whichgrazed Cleggett's shoulder; a little smudge of blood appeared on hisundershirt.
"Take care, take care, Cleggett!" warned Wilton Barnstable, from hispost by the starboard bulwark.
"Make yourself easy," said Cleggett, parrying a counter en carte, "I amonly getting warm."
And both of them, stung by the slight scratches which they hadreceived, settled to the business with an intent and silent deadlinessof purpose.
To all appearances Loge had an immense advantage over Cleggett; hislegs were a good two inches longer; so were his arms. And he knew howto make these peculiarities count. He fought for a while with a calmand steady precision that repeatedly baffled the calculated impetuosityof Cleggett's attack. But the air of bantering certainty with which hehad begun the duel had left him. He no longer wasted his breath onrepartee; no doubt he was surprised to find Cleggett's strength sonearly equal to his own, as Cleggett had been astonished to find inLoge so much finesse. But with a second slight wound Loge began to giveground.
With Cleggett a bout with the foils had always been a duel. It hasbeen indicated, we believe, that he was of a romantic disposition andmuch given to daydreaming; his imagination had thus made every set-toin the fencing room a veritable mortal combat to him. Therefore, thiswas not his first duel; he had fought hundreds of them. And he foughtalways on a settled plan, adapting it, of course, to the idiosyncrasiesof his adversary. It was his custom to vary the system of his attackfrequently in the most disconcerting manner, at the same time steadilyincreasing the pace at which he fought. And when Loge began to giveground and breathe a little harder, Cleggett, far from taking advantageof his opponent's growing distress to rest himself, as a lessdistinguished swordsman might have done, redoubled the vigor of hisassault. Cleggett knew that sooner or later a winded man makes afault. The lungs labor and fail to give the blood all the oxygen itneeds. The circulation suffers. Nerves and muscles are no longer theperfect servants of the brain; for a fraction of a second the sworddeviates from the proper line.
It was for this that Cleggett waited, pressing Loge closer and closer,alert for the instant when Loge would fence wide; waxing as the otherwaned; menacing eyes, throat, and heart with a point that leaped anddazzled; and at the same time inclosing himself within a rampart ofsteel which Loge found it more and more hopeless to attempt topenetrate. It was as if Cleggett's blade were an extension of his will;he and his sword were not two things, but one. The metal in his handwas no longer merely a whip of steel; it was a thing that lived withhis own life. His pulse beat in it. It was a part of him. Hisnervous force permeated it and animated it; it was his thought turnedto tempered metal, and it was with the rapidity, directness andsubtlety of thought that his sword responded to his mind.
"Come!" said Cleggett, as Loge broke ground, scarcely aware that hespoke aloud. "At this rate we shall be at home thrusts soon!"
Loge must have thought so too; a shade passed over his face, his upperlip lifted haggardly. Perhaps even that iron nature was beginning tofeel at last something of the dull sickness which is the fear of death.He retreated continually, and Cleggett was smitten with the fancy toforce him backward and nail him, with a final thrust, to the stump ofthe foremast, which had been broken off some eight feet above the deck.
But Loge, gathering his power, made a brilliant and desperate rally;twice he grazed Cleggett, whose blade was too closely engaged; and thensuddenly broke ground again. This time Cleggett perceived that he hadbeen retreating in accordance with a preconceived program. He wascertain the man contemplated a trick, perhaps some foul stroke.
He rushed forward with a terrible thrust. Loge, whose last maneuverhad taken him within a yard of the hatchway opening into the hold,grasped Cleggett's blade in his left hand, and at the same instantflung his own sword, hilt first, full in Cleggett's face. As Cleggett,struck in the mouth with the pommel, staggered back, Loge plunged feetforemost into the hold. It was too unexpected, and too quickly done,for a shot from Barnstable or any of Cleggett's men.
Cleggett, with the blood streaming from his mouth, recovered himselfand leaped through the aperture in the deck. He landed upon his feetwith a jar, and, shortening his sword in his hand, stared about him inthe gloom.
He saw no one.
An instant later Wilton Barnstable and Cap'n Abernethy were beside him.
"Gone!" said Cleggett simply.
Barnstable drew from his pocket a small electric lantern and swept thebeam in a circle about the hold. Again and again he raked the darknessuntil the finger of light had rested upon every foot of the interior.
But Loge had vanished as completely as a snowflake that falls into atub of water.