between iron-plate and bullet; and, lastly, that the scene of the meeting had only been an occasion long sought by Nicholl to satisfy an old grudge.
There is nothing more terrible than these private duels in America, during which the two adversaries seek each other across thickets, and hunt each other like wild animals. It is then that each must envy those marvellous qualities so natural to the Indians of the prairies, their rapid intelligence, their ingenious ruse, their scent of the enemy. An error, a hesitation, a wrong step, may cause death. In these meetings the Yankees are often accompanied by their dogs, and both sportsmen and game go on for hours.
“What demons you are!” exclaimed Michel Ardan, when his companion had depicted the scene with much energy.
“We are what we are,” answered J.T. Maston modestly; “but let us make haste.”
In vain did Michel Ardan and he rush across the plain still wet with dew, jump the creeks, take the shortest cuts; they could not reach Skersnaw Wood before half-past five. Barbicane must have entered it half-an-hour before.
There an old bushman was tying up faggots his axe had cut.
Maston ran to him crying—
“Have you seen a man enter the wood armed with a rifle? Barbicane, the president—my best friend?”
The worthy secretary of the Gun Club thought naïvely that all the world must know his president. But the bushman did not seem to understand.
“A sportsman,” then said Ardan.
“A sportsman? Yes,” answered the bushman.
“Is it long since?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Too late!” exclaimed Maston.
“Have you heard any firing?” asked Michel Ardan.
“No.”
“Not one shot?”
“Not one. That sportsman does not seem to bag much game!”
“What shall we do?” said Maston.
“Enter the wood at the risk of catching a bullet not meant for us.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Maston, with an unmistakable accent, “I would rather have ten bullets in my head than one in Barbicane’s head.”
“Go ahead, then!” said Ardan, pressing his companion’s hand.
A few seconds after the two companions disappeared in a copse. It was a dense thicket made of huge cypresses, sycamores, tulip-trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and magnolias. The different trees intermingled their branches in inextricable confusion, and quite hid the view. Michel Ardan and Maston walked on side by side phasing silently through the tall grass, making a road for themselves through the vigorous creepers, looking in all the bushes or branches lost in the sombre shade of the foliage, and expecting to hear a shot at every step. As to the traces that Barbicane must have left of his passage through the wood, it was impossible for them to see them, and they marched blindly on in the hardly-formed paths in which an Indian would have followed his adversary step by step.
After a vain search of about an hour’s length the two companions stopped. Their anxiety was redoubled.
“It must be all over,” said Maston in despair. “A man like Barbicane would not lay traps or condescend to any manoeuvre! He is too frank, too courageous. He has gone straight into danger, and doubtless far enough from the bushman for the wind to carry off the noise of the shot!”
“But we should have heard it!” answered Michel Ardan.
“But what if we came too late?” exclaimed J.T. Maston in an accent of despair.
Michel Ardan did not find any answer to make. Maston and he resumed their interrupted walk. From time to time they shouted; they called either Barbicane or Nicholl; but neither of the two adversaries answered. Joyful flocks of birds, roused by the noise, disappeared amongst the branches, and some frightened deer fled through the copses.
They continued their search another hour. The greater part of the wood had been explored. Nothing revealed the presence of the combatants. They began to doubt the affirmation of the bushman, and Ardan was going to renounce the pursuit as useless, when all at once Maston stopped.
“Hush!” said he. “There is some one yonder!”
“Some one?” answered Michel Ardan.
“Yes! a man! He does not seem to move. His rifle is not in his hand. What can he be doing?”
“But do you recognise him?” asked Michel Ardan.
“Yes, yes! he is turning round,” answered Maston.
“Who is it?”
“Captain Nicholl!”
“Nicholl!” cried Michel Ardan, whose heart almost stopped beating.
“Nicholl disarmed! Then he had nothing more to fear from his adversary?”
“Let us go to him,” said Michel Ardan; “we shall know how it is.”
But his companion and he had not gone fifty steps when they stopped to examine the captain more attentively. They imagined they should find a bloodthirsty and revengeful man. Upon seeing him they remained stupefied.
A net with fine meshes was hung between two gigantic tulip-trees, and in it a small bird, with its wings entangled, was struggling with plaintive cries. The bird-catcher who had hung the net was not a human being but a venomous spider, peculiar to the country, as large as a pigeon’s egg, and furnished with enormous legs. The hideous insect, as he was rushing on his prey, was forced to turn back and take refuge in the high branches of a tulip-tree, for a formidable enemy threatened him in his turn.
In fact, Captain Nicholl, with his gun on the ground, forgetting the dangers of his situation, was occupied in delivering as delicately as possible the victim taken in the meshes of the monstrous spider. When he had finished he let the little bird fly away; it fluttered its wings joyfully and disappeared.
Nicholl, touched, was watching it fly through the copse when he heard these words uttered in a voice full of emotion:—
“You are a brave man, you are!”
He turned. Michel Ardan was in front of him, repeating in every tone—
“And a kind one!”
“Michel Ardan!” exclaimed the captain, “what have you come here for, sir?”
“To shake hands with you, Nicholl, and prevent you killing Barbicane or being killed by him.”
“Barbicane!” cried the captain, “I have been looking for him these two hours without finding him! Where is he hiding himself?”
“Nicholl!” said Michel Ardan, “this is not polite! You must always respect your adversary; don’t be uneasy; if Barbicane is alive we shall find him, and so much the more easily that if
