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.