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The next moment the lantern was flung up almost into his eyes, and in the light he saw the sharp, round rim of a pistol-barrel directed immediately against his forehead. In that moment our young gentleman's life hung as a hair in the balance.
Then, holding the pistol-barrel against the spear-shaft with his left hand, thus turning the spear into a support, he took a long and careful aim at a great bulky savage, holding on the top of the fence. Jem followed his example, and covered the other; while the enemy yelled, and thrust at them with their spears, yelling the more excitedly as it was found impossible to reach them.
He sprang toward H'yemba, cursing; but the smith, with a beast-laugh, raised his right hand. "Master!" he mocked. "No nearer or ye die!" Allan, aghast, saw the flicker of sunlight on a pistol-barrel. With only too true an aim, H'yemba had him covered. Came a little pause, tense as steel wire. Somewhere down the terrace sounded a murmur of voices.
"Do you mean to accuse me of plagiarism, wicked fellow? I grant that you are right, my cunning Wolf, it was a lapsus. I did think of Klinger, and I sympathized with his youthful hero Wild, who declared that, among the sweetest pleasures, he would like to be stretched over a drum, or exist in a pistol-barrel, the hand ready to blow him into the air."
Luckily, a noise of steps at the other end of the street checked the hag; she thrust back out of sight what had momentarily gleamed like the steel of a knife or brass of a pistol-barrel; listened again and stared; then, muttering what was probably no prayer for the stranger's welfare, she crossed the street with amazing rapidity.
And as the smith now loudly boasted, insulted, vilified, in the true manner of the savage, imperceptibly, inch by inch, Allan was turning his pistol-barrel upward. Higher, higher, bit by bit it crept toward the horizontal. Unaccustomed to shoot from the hip, Allan realized that right before him lay a supreme test of nerve and marksmanship and skill.
'It's as well to be on the safe side, said the Rat reflectively, polishing a pistol-barrel on his sleeve and looking along it. The Toad, having finished his breakfast, picked up a stout stick and swung it vigorously, belabouring imaginary animals. 'I'll learn 'em to steal my house! he cried. 'I'll learn 'em, I'll learn 'em! 'Don't say "learn 'em," Toad, said the Rat, greatly shocked.
His arm, by this time, was tense and rigidly out-stretched, and his steady pistol-barrel pointed just between the other man's ludicrously blinking eyes. In the silence that followed the woman reached back, and without further hesitation drew the revolver from the motionless man's pocket.
The stranger stepped out from beneath the shadow of a row of beech-trees which grew on the bank close to the path which Jack and his companion were following. He was a broad-set countryman in appearance, habited in a well-worn but strong riding-suit, with leather leggings, a horseman's jackboots, and a broad leathern belt, in which Jack's quick eye caught sight of a pistol-barrel.
'I have you come on and you're a dead man, said the clerk, in a hoarse voice, drawing into the deep darkness toward the door, with the dull gleam of a pistol-barrel just discernible in his extended hand. 'You young gentlemen are always for drawing upon poor bodies how would it have gone if I had not looked to myself, Sir, and come furnished? said Irons, in his own level tone.
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