murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its
further passage. Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our
stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained
clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the
chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man
was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I,
being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In
the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes;
and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a
parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my
defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself
down and lunge at the same moment. It was to play my life upon one
card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left
me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my
own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults,
and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most
readily expose.

'Allez!' said the sergeant-major.

Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my
manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no
more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the
girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling
from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.

When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and
could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads
crowded around me. I sat up. 'What is it?' I exclaimed.