The night was fast closing in, and it was so dark that they attacked and defended themselves almost instinctively.
Suddenly De Wardes felt his word arrested,--he had just touched Buckingham's shoulder.

The duke's sword sunk, as his arm was lowered.
"You are wounded, my lord," said De Wardes, drawing back a step or two.
"Yes, monsieur, but only slightly." "Yet you quitted your guard." "Only from the first effect of the cold steel, but I have recovered.
Let us go on, if you please." And disengaging his sword with a sinister clashing of the blade, the duke wounded the marquis in the breast.
"A hit ?" he said.
"No," cried De Wardes, not moving from his place.
"I beg your pardon, but observing that your shirt was stained--" said Buckingham.
"Well," said De Wardes furiously, "it is now your turn." And with a terrible lunge, he pierced Buckingham's arm, the sword passing between the two bones.

Buckingham feeling his right arm paralyzed, stretched out his left, seized his sword, which was about falling from his nerveless grasp, and before De Wardes could resume his guard, he thrust him through the breast.

De Wardes tottered, his knees gave way beneath him, and leaving his sword still fixed in the duke's arm, he fell into the water, which was soon crimsoned with a more genuine reflection than that which it had borrowed from the clouds.

De Wardes was not dead; he felt the terrible danger that menaced him, for the sea rose fast.