Page:Sketches by Mark Twain.djvu/22

20 I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the centre of the vast solitude of his palm. He gazed at it and shuddered. And still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured, in a broken voice,

"Alas, it is not death I dread, but mutilation."

I heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, "Let the tragedy begin. Stand at my back; do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend."

I gave him my promise. I now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where I judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow-second's whoop. Then I propped myself against M. Gambetta's back, and raised a rousing "Whoop-ee!" This was answered from out the far distance of the fog, and I immediately shouted,

"One,—two,—three,—fire!"

Two little sounds like ''spit! spit!'' broke upon my ear, and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. Buried as I was, I was still able to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect,—

"I die for . . . for . . . perdition take it, what is it I die for? . . . oh, yes,—F! I die that France may live!"

The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of M. Gambetta's person, with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound. Then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting.

The two gladiators fell upon each other's necks, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second