o carry it out of his hand. I
was within an ace of succeeding, yet he avoided me, and doubled back.

He realized then, perhaps, that I was not quite so contemptible an
antagonist as he had been imagining, and he went back to his earlier and
more cautious tactics. Then I changed my plans. I simulated an attack,
and drove him hard for some moments. Strong he was, but there were
advantages of reach and suppleness with me, and even these advantages
apart, had I aimed at his life, I could have made short work of him. But
the game I played was fraught with perils to myself, and once I was
in deadly danger, and as near death from the sword as a man may go and
live. My attack had lured him, as I desired that it should, into making
a riposte. He did so, and as his blade twisted round mine and came
slithering at me, I again carried it off by encircling it, and again I
exerted pressure to deprive him of it. But this time I was farther from
success than before. He laughed at the attempt, as with a suddenness
that I had been far from expecting he disengaged again, and his point
darted like a snake upwards at my throat.

I parried that thrust, but I only parried it when it was within some
three inches of my neck, and even as I turned it aside it missed me as
narrowly as it might without tearing my skin. The imminence of the
peril had been such that, as we mutually recovered, I found a cold sweat
bathing me.

After that, I resolved to abandon the attempt to disarm him by pressure,
and I turned my attention to drawing him into a position that might lend
itself to seizure. But even as I was making up my mind to this--we were
engaged in sixte at the time--I saw a sudden chance. His point was held
low while he watched me; so low that his arm was uncovered and my point
was in line with it. To see the opening, to estimate it, and to take my
resolve was all the work of a fraction of a second. The next instant I
had straightened my elbow, my blade shot out in a lightning stroke and
transfixed his sword-arm.

There was a yell of pain, followed by a deep growl of fury, as, wounded
but not vanquished, the enraged Count caught his falling sword in his
left hand, and whilst my own blade was held tight in the bone of his
right arm, he sought to run me through. I leapt quickly aside, and then,
before he could renew the attempt, my friends had fallen upon him and
wrenched his sword from his hand and mine from his arm.

It would ill have become m