Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies—their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy. A single mistake, a moment’s hesitation, a single false step may cause death. On these occasions Yankees are often accompanied by their dogs, and keep up the struggle for hours. “What demons you are!” cried Michel Ardan, when his companion had depicted this scene to him with much energy. “Yes, we are,” replied J. T. modestly; “but we had better make haste.” Though Michel Ardan and he had crossed the plains still wet with dew, and had taken the shortest route over creeks and ricefields, they could not reach Skersnaw in under five hours and a half. Barbicane must have passed the border half an hour ago. There was an old bushman working there, occupied in selling fagots from trees that had been leveled by his axe. Maston ran toward him, saying, “Have you seen a man go into the wood, armed with a rifle? Barbicane, the president, my best friend?” The worthy secretary of the Gun Club thought that his president must be known by all the world. But the bushman did not seem to understand him. “A hunter?” said Ardan. “A hunter? Yes,” replied the bushman. “Long ago?” “About an hour.” “Too late!” cried Maston. “Have you heard any gunshots?” asked Ardan. “No!” “Not one?” “Not one! that hunter did not look as if he knew how to hunt!” “What is to be done?” said Maston. “We must go into the wood, at the risk of getting a ball which is not intended for us.” “Ah!” cried Maston, in a tone which could not be mistaken, “I would rather have twenty balls in my own head than one in Barbicane’s.” “Forward, then,” said Ardan, pressing his companion’s hand. A few moments later the two friends had disappeared in the copse. It was a dense thicket, in which rose huge cypresses, sycamores, tulip-trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and magnolias. These different trees had interwoven their branches into an inextricable maze, through which the eye could not penetrate. Michel Ardan and Maston walked side by side in silence through the tall grass, cutting themselves a path through the strong creepers, casting curious glances on the bushes, and momentarily expecting to hear the sound of rifles. As for the traces which Barbicane ought to have left of his passage through the wood, there was not a vestige of them visible: so they followed the barely perceptible paths along which Indians had tracked some enemy, and which the dense foliage darkly overshadowed. After an hour spent in vain pursuit the two stopped in intensified anxiety.