Jules Verne - The Essential Jules Verne - 29 Greatest Sci-Fi & Adventure Books in One Edition

The platform was lifted up all at once by a hundred vigorous arms, and the president of the Gun Club was forced to share the honours of triumph with Michel Ardan. The platform was heavy, but the bearers came in continuous relays, disputing, struggling, even fighting for the privilege of lending the support of their shoulders to this manifestation.

However, the unknown did not take advantage of the tumult to leave the place. He kept in the front row, his arms folded, still staring at President Barbicane.

The president did not lose sight of him either, and the eyes of these two men met like flaming swords.

The cries of the immense crowds kept at their maximum of intensity during this triumphant march. Michel Ardan allowed himself to be carried with evident pleasure.

Sometimes the platform pitched and tossed like a ship beaten by the waves. But the two heroes of the meeting were good sailors, and their vessel safely arrived in the port of Tampa Town.

Michel Ardan happily succeeded in escaping from his vigorous admirers. He fled to the Franklin Hotel, quickly reached his room, and glided rapidly into bed whilst an army of 100,000 men watched under his windows.

In the meanwhile a short, grave, and decisive scene had taken place between the mysterious personage and the president of the Gun Club.

Barbicane, liberated at last, went straight to his adversary.

“Come!” said he in a curt voice.

The stranger followed him on to the quay, and they were soon both alone at the entrance to a wharf opening on to Jones’ Fall.

There these enemies, still unknown to one another, looked at each other.

“Who are you?” asked Barbicane.

“Captain Nicholl.”

“I thought so. Until now fate has never made you cross my path.”

“I crossed it of my own accord.”

“You have insulted me.”

“Publicly.”

“And you shall give me satisfaction for that insult.”

“Now, this minute.”

“No. I wish everything between us to be kept secret. There is a wood situated three miles from Tampa—Skersnaw Wood. Do you know it?”

“Yes.”

“Will you enter it tomorrow 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.

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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.

There is nothing more terrible than these private duels in America, during which the two adversaries seek each other across thickets, and hunt each other like wild animals. It is then that each must envy those marvellous qualities so natural to the Indians of the prairies, their rapid intelligence, their ingenious ruse, their scent of the enemy. An error, a hesitation, a wrong step, may cause death. In these meetings the Yankees are often accompanied by their dogs, and both sportsmen and game go on for hours.

“What demons you are!” exclaimed Michel Ardan, when his companion had depicted the scene with much energy.

“We are what we are,” answered J.T. Maston modestly; “but let us make haste.”

In vain did Michel Ardan and he rush across the plain still wet with dew, jump the creeks, take the shortest cuts; they could not reach Skersnaw Wood before half-past five. Barbicane must have entered it half-an-hour before.

There an old bushman was tying up faggots his axe had cut.

Maston ran to him crying—

“Have you seen a man enter the wood armed with a rifle? Barbicane, the president—my best friend?”

The worthy secretary of the Gun Club thought naïvely that all the world must know his president. But the bushman did not seem to understand.

“A sportsman,” then said Ardan.

“A sportsman? Yes,” answered the bushman.

“Is it long since?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Too late!” exclaimed Maston.

“Have you heard any firing?” asked Michel Ardan.

“No.”

“Not one shot?”

“Not one. That sportsman does not seem to bag much game!”

“What shall we do?” said Maston.

“Enter the wood at the risk of catching a bullet not meant for us.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Maston, with an unmistakable accent, “I would rather have ten bullets in my head than one in Barbicane’s head.”

“Go ahead, then!” said Ardan, pressing his companion’s hand.

A few seconds after the two companions disappeared in a copse. It was a dense thicket made of huge cypresses, sycamores, tulip-trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and magnolias. The different trees intermingled their branches in inextricable confusion, and quite hid the view. Michel Ardan and Maston walked on side by side phasing silently through the tall grass, making a road for themselves through the vigorous creepers, looking in all the bushes or branches lost in the sombre shade of the foliage, and expecting to hear a shot at every step. As to the traces that Barbicane must have left of his passage through the wood, it was impossible for them to see them, and they marched blindly on in the hardly-formed paths in which an Indian would have followed his adversary step by step.

After a vain search of about an hour’s length the two companions stopped. Their anxiety was redoubled.