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The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the difficulties of attack. The beetle has no endless chain to seize its victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and avoid its feet and its mandibles.
"The pole-axe man hit you with the flat of his unhandy weapon. It is lucky for you that he was a bungler, however, for there is a sore dint in your helm." I sat up and looked round the camp. There was a knot of captives in its midst, among whom was the chief I had fought, wounded, indeed, but not badly, and our men were eating the enemy's provender and laughing.
I said to Sir Hyde: "This is no time, Sir, to think of saving the masts, shall we cut the mainmast away?" "Ay! as fast as you can." I accordingly went into the weather chains with a pole-axe, to cut away the lanyards; the boatswain went to leeward, and the carpenters stood by the mast.
Then something attracted his attention in the forest, and he stood motionless looking towards it, broadside to me, with his fore-paws planted on the carcass. This gave me my chance. I drew a very fine bead between his eye and ear; and pulled trigger. He dropped like a steer when struck with a pole-axe. If there is a good hiding-place handy it is better to lie in wait at the carcass.
You will perceive the value of this operation. His clothes were ready for me without speck or blemish; and when we returned from the pool into the shelter of the bungalow it was a naked man I smote and dropped with one blow of my formidable weapon. His back was turned and the pole-axe head went through his skull like butter.
Again some two miles further on Ralph met a flock of sheep coming down a bent which the road climbed, and with them were three men, their drovers, and they drew nigh him as he was amidst of the sheep, so that he could scarce see the way. Each of these three had a weapon; one a pole-axe, another a long spear, and the third a flail jointed and bound with iron, and an anlace hanging at his girdle.
Then he slid down softly on his stomach as far as the gutter. Below him the ball was in progress. The thunder of crowbars, the cracking of panels, the strong blows dealt to the tune of oaths; fresh oaths, thunder, pole-axe blows upon the wall. The robbers, unable to break in the doors, were trying to dislodge their posts. And in the distance no noise, no sign of help.
Utterly confounded by the judge's skill, overpowered by his cruel dexterity, by the swiftness of the blows he had dealt him while making use of the errors of a life laid bare as probes to search his conscience, Lucien sat like an animal which the butcher's pole-axe had failed to kill. Free and innocent when he came before the judge, in a moment his own avowal had made him feel criminal.
Like the snap of a whip the report rang out clean and sharp, and the bullet went home at just the one vulnerable point in the thick skull that at which the butcher aims his pole-axe.
But if you chance to please even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections among the coxcombs of the young.
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