As he sprang towards me, I hurled the pistol with all my strength
towards him. It struck him squarely in the breast, staggering him, and
forcing him off his guard. Then, before he could recover, I sprang past
the point of his weapon. I seized his sword arm, by the wrist, with my
left hand, and threw my other arm around his body. We were as evenly
matched as though we had trained at weights and measurements for the
combat, and for a moment we struggled madly together, while I exerted
all my strength to bend his wrist backward, so that he would be
compelled to drop his sword.
It seems strange that such a struggle, taking place in the streets of a
great city immediately following upon the four reports of my pistol,
had not attracted attention and drawn somebody to the scene, but the
passing night had been one of terror; policemen had been called away
from their posts, and at that hour, just after dawn, when everything
was quiet, nobody heard, or if they heard, feared to come. In using all
my effort to compel him to drop his weapon I neglected the other
necessary points of the struggle, and although I succeeded in my
design, he forced me backwards at the same instant so that I fell
beneath him, but I still had my right arm tightly clasped around him,
and I hugged him to me with all the strength that I could master. With
Durnief, it was a struggle for life, liberty, and everything that he
possessed, and he fought with all the desperation of a madman. With me,
it was life, and the woman I loved, and I fought coolly, knowing that
he could not get away from me, believing that I could tire him out, and
satisfied that I could prevent him from securing his sword again. He
managed to wrench his hand from my grasp, and he struck me a savage
blow on the head with his fist, but I threw the other arm around him
then, and hugged him all the tighter, so that he was unable to repeat
the blow.
It was a strange combat. A person ten feet away could not have heard
it, for there was no sound save our heavy breathing. The snow deadened
every noise that might have been made otherwise. The air was bitterly
cold.
Presently I became conscious of the fact that my opponent was striving
with all his might to force me in a certain direction, and I correctly
conjectured that he had been able to discover the location of the sword
and was making an attempt to reach it. So I bent my energies to
avoiding his effort. My life had been largely one of adventure, and I
had taken part in many combats, but never before in one like this where
it was simply a matter of endurance, where neither party to the fray
was suffering injury, and where the hope of success was so evenly
divided. Odd as it may seem, while pinioning him thus so that he could
not act on the offensive, I began to conjecture how long we might hold
out, and the probability of assistance arriving to end it; and it was
the uncertainty of the nature of that assistance that concerned me
most.