Rising to his feet, he saw Dodd sitting at some distance; his first impulse was to fly from so terrible an antagonist, but, as he made for the ravine, he observed that Dodd was in a helpless condition, wounded perhaps by Moinard. And where was Moinard? Nothing visible of him but his knife: that lay glittering in the road. Thibout with anxious eye turned towards Dodd, kneeled to pick it up, and in the act a drop of his own blood fell on the dust beside it. He snarled like a wounded tiger, spat out half-a-dozen teeth, and crept on tiptoe to his safe revenge. Awake from your lethargy or you are a dead man! No! Thibout got to him unperceived, and the knife glittered over his head. At this moment the air seemed to fill with clattering hoofs and voices, and a pistol-shot rang. Dodd heard and started, and so saw his peril. He put up his left hand to parry the blow, but feebly. Luckily for him Thibout's eyes were now turned another way, and glaring with stupid terror out of his mutilated visage: a gigantic mounted fiend, with black face and white gleaming, rolling eyes was coming at him like the wind, uttering horrid howls. Thibout launched himself at the precipice with a shriek of dismay, and went rolling after his comrade; but ere he had gone ten yards he fell across a young larch-tree and hung balanced. Up came the foaming horses: Fullalove dismounted hastily and fired three deliberate shots down at Thibout from his revolver. He rolled off, and never stopped again till he splashed into the torrent, and lay there staining it with blood from his battered face and perforated shoulder. Vespasian jumped off, and with glistening eyes administered some good brandy to Dodd. He, unconscious of his wound, a slight one, relieved their anxiety by assuring them somewhat faintly he was not hurt, but that, ever since that “tap on the head” he got in the Straits of Gaspar, any angry excitement told on him, made his head swim, and his temples seem to swell from the inside. “I should have come off second-best but for you, my dear friends. Shake hands over it, do! O, Lord bless you! Lord bless you both. As for you, Vespasian, I do think you are my guardian angel. Why, this is the second time you've saved my life. No, it isn't: for it's the third.” “Now you git along, Massa Cap'n,” said Vespasian. “You berry good man, ridicalous good man; and dis child ar'nt no gardening angel at all; he ar a darned Anatomy” (with such a look of offended dignity at Fullalove). After examining the field of battle and comparing notes, they mounted Dodd on Vespasian's horse, and walked quietly till Dodd's head got better; and then they cantered on three abreast, Vespasian in the middle with one sinewy hand on each horse's mane; and such was his muscular power, that he often relieved his feet by lifting himself clean into the air, and the rest of the time his toe but touched the ground, and he sailed like an ostrich and grinned and chattered like a monkey.