The seconds stood on each side of the line of fight with drawn swords also, but still sombre in their dark frock-coats and hats.
The principals saluted.

The Colonel said quietly, "Engage!" and the two blades touched and tingled.
When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme's arm, all the fantastic fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like dreams from a man waking up in bed.

He remembered them clearly and in order as mere delusions of the nerves--how the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been the fear of the airless vacuum of science.

The first was the old fear that any miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless modern fear that no miracle can ever happen.

But he saw that these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless common sense.