“Yes.”
“Will you enter it to-morrow morning at five
o’clock by one side?”
“Yes, if you will enter it by the other at the
same time.”
“And you will not forget your rifle?”
said Barbicane.
“Not more than you will forget yours,”
answered Captain Nicholl.
After these words had been coldly pronounced the president
of the Gun Club and the captain separated. Barbicane
returned to his dwelling; but, instead of taking some
hours’ rest, he passed the night in seeking means
to avoid the shock of the projectile, and to solve
the difficult problem given by Michel Ardan at the
meeting.
HOW A FRENCHMAN SETTLES AN AFFAIR.
Whilst the duel was being discussed between the president
and the captain—a terrible and savage duel
in which each adversary became a man-hunter—Michel
Ardan was resting after the fatigues of his triumph.
Resting is evidently not the right expression, for
American beds rival in hardness tables of marble or
granite.
Ardan slept badly, turning over and over between the
serviettes that served him for sheets, and
he was thinking of installing a more comfortable bed
in his projectile when a violent noise startled him
from his slumbers. Thundering blows shook his
door. They seemed to be administered with an
iron instrument. Shouts were heard in this racket,
rather too early to be agreeable.
“Open!” some one cried. “Open,
for Heaven’s sake!”
There was no reason why Ardan should acquiesce in
so peremptory a demand. Still he rose and opened
his door at the moment it was giving way under the
efforts of the obstinate visitor.
The secretary of the Gun Club bounded into the room.
A bomb would not have entered with less ceremony.
“Yesterday evening,” exclaimed J.T.
Maston ex abrupto, “our president was
publicly insulted during the meeting! He has challenged
his adversary, who is no other than Captain Nicholl!
They are going to fight this morning in Skersnaw Wood!
I learnt it all from Barbicane himself! If he
is killed our project will be at an end! This
duel must be prevented! Now one man only can
have enough empire over Barbicane to stop it, and
that man is Michel Ardan.”
Whilst J.T. Maston was speaking thus, Michel
Ardan, giving up interrupting him, jumped into his
vast trousers, and in less than two minutes after
the two friends were rushing as fast as they could
go towards the suburbs of Tampa Town.
It was during this rapid course that Maston told Ardan
the state of the case. He told him the real causes
of the enmity between Barbicane and Nicholl, how that
enmity was of old date, why until then, thanks to
mutual friends, the president and the captain had never
met; he added that it was solely a rivalry between
iron-plate and bullet; and, lastly, that the scene
of the meeting had only been an occasion long sought
by Nicholl to satisfy an old grudge.
