Down upon Hodge came his antagonist, but he tore himself away from the fingers that tried to clutch and hold him. With a quick spring, Bertrand rose to his feet and stood over Hodge with the rapier uplifted.
“Now!” he hissed, with a savage laugh—“now you get it for fair!”
Then he lunged as if meaning to pin Hodge to the floor.
With a squirming movement to one side, Bart barely avoided being run through by the blade.
“A miss is as good as a mile!” he thought, and at the same time he again cast the chair at Defarge.
Bertrand’s legs were struck and he was confused and disconcerted for a moment, and that was enough to give Bart time to spring up.
As he rose, Hodge had the other rapier gripped in his hand. At last he realized that there was no way to avoid such an encounter, and so he hurled himself into it with the furious energy of a creature at bay.
Clash! clash! rang out the meeting blades.
Probably no stranger encounter ever occurred at Yale than this night battle between two students armed with deadly rapiers. The expressions on their faces told that the struggle was of the most serious nature.
This was no mere fencing-bout for sport. On one side, at least, it was a duel with the most deadly import.
But Defarge had been astounded by the escape of Hodge from that thrust. The crack of the chair against his knees had confused him. And then he was dazed when Bart leaped up like a supple panther, gripping the rapier, and attacked him with the gleaming blade.
The fierceness of Bart’s assault was something impossible to withstand long.
Sparks flew from the meeting weapons, which gleamed and flashed and hissed through the air.
The look on the face of Bart Hodge was one of such furious determination that the French youth involuntarily gave way before him.
“You would have it, you devil’s whelp!” came through Bart’s teeth. “Stand up and fight! You forced it on me, now make good—or take the consequences!”
With a twisting stroke, Bart had torn the weapon from the hand of his adversary and sent it spinning in a far corner, where it fell rattling to the floor.
The next instant, with his left hand, Frank Merriwell’s friend and champion seized the unarmed youth by the throat and hurled him backward upon the table that stood in the middle of the room.