project will be at an end! This duel must be
prevented! Now one man only can have enough empire over Barbicane to
stop it, and that man is Michel Ardan."

Whilst J.T. Maston was speaking thus, Michel Ardan, giving up
interrupting him, jumped into his vast trousers, and in less than two
minutes after the two friends were rushing as fast as they could go
towards the suburbs of Tampa Town.

It was during this rapid course that Maston told Ardan the state of the
case. He told him the real causes of the enmity between Barbicane and
Nicholl, how that enmity was of old date, why until then, thanks to
mutual friends, the president and the captain had never met; he added
that it was solely a rivalry between iron-plate and bullet; and, lastly,
that the scene of the meeting had only been an occasion long sought by
Nicholl to satisfy an old grudge.

There is nothing more terrible than these private duels in America,
during which the two adversaries seek each other across thickets, and
hunt each other like wild animals. It is then that each must envy those
marvellous qualities so natural to the Indians of the prairies, their
rapid intelligence, their ingenious ruse, their scent of the enemy. An
error, a hesitation, a wrong step, may cause death. In these meetings
the Yankees are often accompanied by their dogs, and both sportsmen and
game go on for hours.

"What demons you are!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, when his companion had
depicted the scene with much energy.

"We are what we are," answered J.T. Maston modestly; "but let us make
haste."

In vain did Michel Ardan and he rush across the plain still wet with
dew, jump the creeks, take the shortest cuts; they could not reach
Skersnaw Wood before half-past five. Barbicane must have entered it
half-an-hour before.

There an old bushman was tying up faggots his axe had cut.

Maston ran to him crying--

"Have you seen a man enter the wood armed with a rifle? Barbicane, the
president--my best friend?"

The worthy secretary of the Gun Club thought naively that all the world
must know his president. But the bushman did not seem to understand.

"A sportsman," then said Ardan.

"A sportsman? Yes," answered the bushman.

"Is it long since?"

"About an hour ago."

"Too late!" exclaimed Maston.

"Have you heard any firing?" asked Michel Ardan.

"No."

"Not one shot?"

"Not one. That sportsman does not seem to bag much game!"

"What shall we do?" said Maston.

"Enter