dent, but stayed where I was
to give him time to get up. He lay upon his back for a minute, glaring
sullenly at me to see if I would kill him. But finding that I had no
such mind he recovered himself nimbly enough. And being, no doubt,
still further enraged at this accident having put him, as it were,
into my power, he now made at me with the most terrible vehemence,
raining down blows upon me sufficient to have felled an ox. And then
in the midst of it all, while I was warding off his fury, and the
sparks flew from our weapons every instant, I suddenly felt my hand
jarred as though I had touched a conger, and the blade of my cutlass
snapped off at the hilt with a crash, and I stood there at his mercy.

He stopped short, as much astonished as I was, while I sank down on
the seat next the stern, ready to sob, and put up my hands before my
face.

"That cursed Jew has cheated me of my life!" I groaned between my set
teeth.

Rupert rested the point of his cutlass upon the seat in front of him
and looked over at me curiously.

"Young man," he said, "your life is forfeit to me, and it hath never
been said that Rupert Gurney spared an enemy. Yet, inasmuch as you are
of my blood and but raw in the world, I have half a mind to make terms
with you. Will you make your apology for the violence you put upon me
in the tavern, and swear to repeat its terms before all those who were
witnesses of our dispute?"

I looked up at him and smiled bitterly in his face.

"Do you understand me so little, and you a Ford by the mother's side?"
I answered him. "Now that I have no weapon you may murder me if you
will, but apology you shall have none from me--unless," I added, "you
take back your insult to the woman I love."

"You young fool!" he ground out savagely. "That drab you make such a
to-do about has been mine this two months past."

I leave it unsaid how these words affected me, both then and for long
afterwards. For up to that moment I had looked upon the girl with as
pure a reverence as any boy ever cherished for a maid, and my cousin's
vile boast, cast it back to him as I might, sank into my mind and
worked there like a poison.

"I believe you lie," I said to him with marvellous coldness. For what
with the loss of blood, and the despair which had seized upon me at
the breaking of my weapon, and the news I had just received, I was
become quite dispirited, and was indifferent to what he might do with
me.

"Die, then, since yo