“Michel Ardan!” cried the captain. “Why are you here?” “To press your hand, Nicholl, and to prevent you from either killing Barbicane or being killed by him.” “Barbicane!” returned the captain. “I have been looking for him for the last two hours in vain. Where is he hiding?” “Nicholl!” said Michel Ardan, “this is not courteous! we ought always to treat an adversary with respect; rest assureed if Barbicane is still alive we shall find him all the more easily; because if he has not, like you, been amusing himself with freeing oppressed birds, he must be looking for _you_. When we have found him, Michel Ardan tells you this, there will be no duel between you.” “Between President Barbicane and myself,” gravely replied Nicholl, “there is a rivalry which the death of one of us—” “Pooh, pooh!” said Ardan. “Brave fellows like you indeed! you shall not fight!” “I will fight, sir!” “No!” “Captain,” said J. T. Maston, with much feeling, “I am a friend of the president’s, his _alter ego_, his second self; if you really must kill some one, _shoot me!_ it will do just as well!” “Sir,” Nicholl replied, seizing his rifle convulsively, “these jokes—” “Our friend Maston is not joking,” replied Ardan. “I fully understand his idea of being killed himself in order to save his friend. But neither he nor Barbicane will fall before the balls of Captain Nicholl. Indeed I have so attractive a proposal to make to the two rivals, that both will be eager to accept it.” “What is it?” asked Nicholl with manifest incredulity. “Patience!” exclaimed Ardan. “I can only reveal it in the presence of Barbicane.” “Let us go in search of him then!” cried the captain. The three men started off at once; the captain having discharged his rifle threw it over his shoulder, and advanced in silence. Another half hour passed, and the pursuit was still fruitless. Maston was oppressed by sinister forebodings. He looked fiercely at Nicholl, asking himself whether the captain’s vengeance had already been satisfied, and the unfortunate Barbicane, shot, was perhaps lying dead on some bloody track. The same thought seemed to occur to Ardan; and both were casting inquiring glances on Nicholl, when suddenly Maston paused. The motionless figure of a man leaning against a gigantic catalpa twenty feet off appeared, half-veiled by the foliage. “It is he!” said Maston. Barbicane never moved. Ardan looked at the captain, but he did not wince. Ardan went forward crying: “Barbicane! Barbicane!” No answer! Ardan rushed toward his friend; but in the act of seizing his arms, he stopped short and uttered a cry of surprise. Barbicane, pencil in hand, was tracing geometrical figures in a memorandum book, while his unloaded rifle lay beside him on the ground. Absorbed in his studies, Barbicane, in his turn forgetful of the duel, had seen and heard nothing. When Ardan took his hand, he looked up and stared at his visitor in astonishment.