Princess Zara

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.