“Santa Maria!  I do not know,” she said; and swooned all her length on the matted floor.

Father Brown lifted her to a sofa, flung a pot of water over her, shouted for help, and then rushed down to the landing-stage of the little island.  But the canoe was already in mid-stream, and old Paul was pulling and pushing it up the river with an energy incredible at his years.

“I will save my master,” he cried, his eyes blazing maniacally.  “I will save him yet!”

Father Brown could do nothing but gaze after the boat as it struggled up-stream and pray that the old man might waken the little town in time.

“A duel is bad enough,” he muttered, rubbing up his rough dust-coloured hair, “but there’s something wrong about this duel, even as a duel.  I feel it in my bones.  But what can it be?”

As he stood staring at the water, a wavering mirror of sunset, he heard from the other end of the island garden a small but unmistakable sound—­the cold concussion of steel.  He turned his head.

Away on the farthest cape or headland of the long islet, on a strip of turf beyond the last rank of roses, the duellists had already crossed swords.  Evening above them was a dome of virgin gold, and, distant as they were, every detail was picked out.  They had cast off their coats, but the yellow waistcoat and white hair of Saradine, the red waistcoat and white trousers of Antonelli, glittered in the level light like the colours of the dancing clockwork dolls.  The two swords sparkled from point to pommel like two diamond pins.  There was something frightful in the two figures appearing so little and so gay.  They looked like two butterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.

Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like a wheel.  But when he came to the field of combat he found he was born too late and too early—­too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of the grim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate any disastrous issue of it.  For the two men were singularly well matched, the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, the Sicilian using his with a murderous care.  Few finer fencing matches can ever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled and sparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river.  The dizzy fight was balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest; by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police.  It would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men.  But there was no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the police.  No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in the Pacific.