Then came a lance thrust; he parried it with his sabre and plunged within range of the point; there was a sharp, snake-like hiss of the light, curved blade; down went Apache number two.
At this rate, providing there were no interruptions, he could finish the whole twenty.

He went at his job with a handy adroitness which was almost scientific, it was so much like surgery, like dissection.

His mind was bent, with a sort of preternatural calmness and cleverness, upon the business of parrying lance thrusts, aiming his revolver, and delivering sabre cuts.

It was a species of fighting intellection, at once prudent and destructive.

It was not the headlong, reckless, pugnacious rage of the old Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian berserker.