A frenzy seized him.

Might he not yet turn to advantage this hesitancy of Crispin's to strike the final blow?
He braced himself for a supreme effort, and turning his wrist from a simulated thrust in the first position, he doubled, and stretching out, lunged vigorously in quarte.

As he lengthened his arm in the stroke there came a sudden twitch at his wrist; the weapon was twisted from his grasp, and he stood disarmed at Crispin's mercy.
A gurgling cry broke despite him from his lips, and his eyes grew wide in a sickly terror as they encountered the knight's sinister glance.

Not three paces behind him was the wall, and on it, within the hand's easy reach, hung many a trophied weapon that might have served him then.

But the fascination of fear was upon him, benumbing his wits and paralysing his limbs, with the thought that the next pulsation of his tumultuous heart would prove its last.