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He would not stop to breathe, he had reached the point in his insensate fury when he could have flung himself upon the rapier's point and felt it cleave his breastbone and start through his back with the joy of hell, if he could have struck the other man deep but once.
"Master," he said, "the next man that you choose to kill you, let him be one too base-born to know the tricks of the rapier, too ignorant to do aught but wish you well, some poor fat fool over forty who shall be too heavy to elude your rapier's point and too elderly for it to matter when you kill him at your Chivalry, the best of life being gone already at forty-five."
Every word that Father Beret had spoken was true and went home with force. There was no time for parley or subterfuge; the sword looked as if, eager to find his heart, it could not be held back another moment. But the wan, cold face of the girl had more power than the rapier's hungry point. It made an abject coward of him. "I am willing to give you my word," he presently said.
The automatic sounding machine was being used at regular intervals to give them some sort of an idea as to their position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the Rapier's standard compass, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork.
When he had suggested food or rest Morano had fallen in with his wishes; when he had suggested winning a castle in vague wars Morano had agreed with him. Now he had dismissed Morano and had driven him away at the rapier's point. There was no one now either to cook his food or to believe in the schemes his ambition made. There was no one now to speak of the wars as the natural end of the journey.
Thick weather at sea is always exasperating, and to avoid the chance of colliding with something they could not possibly avoid at any greater speed, Langdon had been forced to ease to the leisurely speed of eight knots, and eight knots to a T.B.D., even a relic of the Rapier's age, is just about as irritating as being wedged in a narrow lane in a 40-horse power Daimler behind a horse pantechnicon.
But remembering his loss, he shook the rapier's point, and continued: "Thy taunts and effrontery will not avail thee, knave," he cried. "Thou knowest that I would have engaged thee as the leader of a chosen band, to favor the flight of one dear from Venice." "Nothing more true, Signore." "And thou didst refuse the service?" "Noble duke, I did."
I shall write villain upon him with my rapier's point. 'I have never seen you ruffled before, said I. 'No, he answered, laughing. 'Many have lived with me for years and would give me a certificate for temper. But this is too much. Sir Edward Mortimer is my mother's younger brother, Clarke, but he is not many years older than myself.
And it must be conceded, in the beginning, that Hall Caine has written a book a live book and that no one will dissect it without finding blood on his rapier's point. As for the critics themselves, they have had much to say, after their fashions, and have wasted vast quantities of good ink in giving the author of "The Christian" meanings which he never meant.
She laughed merrily, standing beautifully poised before him, the rapier's point slightly elevated. Her short skirt left her feet and ankles free to show their graceful proportions and the perfect pose in which they held her supple body. "You see what I can do with the colechemarde, eh, Monsieur Rene de Ronville!" she exclaimed, giving him a smile which fairly blinded him.
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