THE MAGNET SWITCH
The guardsmen paid not the slightest attention to their wards, for
the red men could not move over two feet from the great rings to
which they were padlocked, though each had seized a weapon upon
which he had been engaged when I entered the room, and stood ready
to join me could they have but done so.
The yellow men devoted all their attention to me, nor were they
long in discovering that the three of them were none too many to
defend the armory against John Carter. Would that I had had my own
good long-sword in my hand that day; but, as it was, I rendered a
satisfactory account of myself with the unfamiliar weapon of the
yellow man.
At first I had a time of it dodging their villainous hook-swords,
but after a minute or two I had succeeded in wresting a second
straight sword from one of the racks along the wall, and thereafter,
using it to parry the hooks of my antagonists, I felt more evenly
equipped.
The three of them were on me at once, and but for a lucky circumstance
my end might have come quickly. The foremost guardsman made
a vicious lunge for my side with his hook after the three of them
had backed me against the wall, but as I sidestepped and raised my
arm his weapon but grazed my side, passing into a rack of javelins,
where it became entangled.
Before he could release it I had run him through, and then, falling
back upon the tactics that have saved me a hundred times in tight
pinches, I rushed the two remaining warriors, forcing them back
with a perfect torrent of cuts and thrusts, weaving my sword in
and out about their guards until I had the fear of death upon them.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181