to soiling my sword a second time with the blood of a wretch like you, I swear by my faith as an honest man—” and at these words d’Artagnan made so fierce a gesture that the wounded man sprang up.
“Stop, stop!” cried he, regaining strength by force of terror. “I will go—I will go!”
D’Artagnan took the soldier’s arquebus, made him go on before him, and urged him toward his companion by pricking him behind with his sword.
It was a frightful thing to see this wretch, leaving a long track of blood on the ground he passed over, pale with approaching death, trying to drag himself along without being seen to the body of his accomplice, which lay twenty paces from him.
Terror was so strongly painted on his face, covered with a cold sweat, that d’Artagnan took pity on him, and casting upon him a look of contempt, “Stop,” said he, “I will show you the difference between a man of courage and such a coward as you. Stay where you are; I will go myself.”
And with a light step, an eye on the watch, observing the movements of the enemy and taking advantage of the accidents of the ground, d’Artagnan succeeded in reaching the second soldier.
There were two means of gaining his object—to search him on the spot, or to carry him away, making a buckler of his body, and search him in the trench.
D’Artagnan preferred the second means, and lifted the assassin onto his shoulders at the moment the enemy fired.
A slight shock, the dull noise of three balls which penetrated the flesh, a last cry, a convulsion of agony, proved to d’Artagnan that the would-be assassin had saved his life.