"With a hearty curse, Blonay grasped the dog by the back of the neck,
and, drawing the skin tightly across the throat, quickly passed the keen
edge of his knife but once over it, and then thrust the body from him.
Sheathing the knife and seizing his rifle, he again set forward, and did
not stop till he gained a small but thick under-brush. His pursuers
now came up to the dead body of the dog; seeing which, they considered
further pursuit hopeless.

"At this moment, sounds of a trumpet came from the camp, as the signal
to return. Humphries told the others to obey its summons, but avowed his
determination of pursuing Blonay until he or the other had fallen. After
they had left him, he again set forward, and walked very fast in the
direction he supposed his enemy had taken, and had not proceeded far ere
he saw his track in the mud, which he followed until it was lost among
the leaves. Darkness coming on, he gave up the chase until the next
morning. That night both slept in the swamp, not more than two hundred
yards apart, but unconscious of each other's locality. In the morning,
Humphries was the first to awake. Descending from the tree where he had
slept, he carefully looked around, thinking what he should do next.
While he thus stood, a slight noise reached his ears, sounding like
the friction of bark; a repetition of it showed where it came from. He
glanced at an old cypress which stood in the water near him, and saw
that its trunk was hollow, but did not look as if it would hold a man.
On a sudden, something prompted him to look upward, and, in the quick
glance he gave, the glare of a wild and well-known eye, peeping out upon
him from its woody retreat, met his gaze. With a howl of delight, he
raised his rifle, and the drop of the deadly instrument fell upon the
aperture; but before he could draw the trigger the object was gone. It
was Blonay, who, the moment he perceived the aim of Humphries' piece,
sank into the body of the tree.

"'Come out and meet your enemy like a man!' exclaimed Humphries, 'and
don't crawl, like a snake, into a hollow tree, and wait for his heel.
Come out, you skunk! You shall have fair fight, and your own distance.
It shall be the quickest fire that shall make the difference of chances
between us. Come out, if you're a man!' Thus he raved at him; but a
fiendish laugh was the only answer he got. He next tried to cut his legs
with his knife, by piercing the bark; but a bend of the tree, on wh