His adversary, turning back the sleeves of the unfortunate white linen, picked up the other sword, and practiced his fingering on the silver hilt, while the blade answered as delicately as the bow to a violinist.  At last he came forward, with thin lips and hard, thoughtful eyes, like a man bent upon dispatch.  Both men saluted formally, and sprang on guard.

From the first twitter of the blades, even Rudolph knew the outcome.  Heywood, his face white and anxious in the failing light, fought at full stretch, at the last wrench of skill.  Chantel, for the moment, was fencing; and though his attacks came ceaseless and quick as flame, he was plainly prolonging them, discarding them, repeating, varying, whether for black-hearted merriment, or the vanity of perfect form, or love of his art.  Graceful, safe, easy, as though performing the grand salute, he teased and frolicked, his bright blade puzzling the sight, scattering like quicksilver in the endless whirl and clash.

Teppich was gaping foolishly, Sturgeon shaking his head, the Cockney, with narrow body drawn together, watching, shivering, squatting on toes and finger-tips, like a runner about to spring from a mark.  Rudolph, dizzy with pain and suspense, nursed his forearm mechanically.  The hurried, silver ring of the hilts dismayed him, the dust from the garden path choked him like an acrid smoke.

Suddenly Chantel, dropping low like a deflected arrow, swooped in with fingers touching the ground.  On “three feet,” he had delivered the blow so long withheld.

The watchers shouted.  Nesbit sprang up, released.  But Heywood, by some desperate sleight, had parried the certainty, and even tried a riposte.  Still afoot and fighting, he complained testily above the sword-play:—­

“Don’t shout like that!  Fair field, you chaps!”

Above the sword-play, too, came gradually a murmur of voices.  Through the dust, beyond the lunging figures, Rudolph was distantly aware of crowded bodies, of yellow faces grinning or agape, in the breach of the compound wall.  Men of the neighboring hamlet had gathered, to watch the foreign monsters play at this new, fantastic game.  Shaven heads bobbed, saffron arms pointed, voices, sharp and guttural, argued scornfully.

The hilts rang, the blades grated faster.  But now it was plain that Heywood could do no more, by luck or inspiration.  Fretted by his clumsy yet strong and close defense, Chantel was forcing on the end.  He gave a panting laugh.  Instantly, all saw the weaker blade fly wide, the stronger swerve, to dart in victorious,—­and then saw Doctor Chantel staggering backward, struck full in the face by something round and heavy.  The brown missile skipped along the garden path.

Another struck a bottle-end, and burst into milk-white fragments, like a bomb.  A third, rebounding from Teppich’s girdle, left him bent and gasping.  Strange yells broke out, as from a tribe of apes.  The air was thick with hurtling globes.  Cocoanuts rained upon the company, tempestuously, as though an invisible palm were shaken by a hurricane.  Among them flew sticks, jagged lumps of sun-dried clay, thick scales of plaster.