He had underestimated his man. Cyrano adjusted in the split second needed and so saved himself from a bad wound. But the point did penetrate his upper right arm slightly.

Cyrano came out of the retreat with a lunge which was parried. Not quite well enough. The man's arm also bore a slight wound.

''You have the honor of the first blood,'' Cyrano said in Esperan­to. "And that is indeed an honor. No other man has ever succeeded in doing that."

It was foolish to waste desperately needed breath in conversation. Cyrano, however, was as curious as the alley cat he resembled.

"What is your name?"

The man said nothing, though it could be stated that his blade spoke for him. Its point was quicker than the tongue of a fishwife.

"I am one whom you may have heard of. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac!"

The dark man only smiled more ferociously, and he pressed Cyrano even more. This fellow was not one to be shaken by a name, no matter how impressive. Nor did he intend to expend energy in talking. Of course, it was barely possible that he did not know the name of de Bergerac.

Someone shouted. It could have been this distraction or perhaps it was after all the shock of finding out whom he faced. Whatever the reason, the man's reaction was not quite what it should have been. Using the thrust invented by Jamac, Cyrano drove his blade through the man's thigh.

Even so, his point went deep into Cyrano's right arm. His epee clattered on the deck.

The man fell then, but he tried to get up on one knee to defend himself. Blood flowed swiftly down his leg.

Cyrano, hearing the slap of feet, looked around. Here came Sturtevant and Cabell, pistols in their hands.

"Do not shoot him!" Cyrano cried.

The two halted, their weapons aimed at the dark man.

Cyrano picked up his sword with his left hand. His right arm hurt abominably; the blood was running like wine from a freshly broached cask.

Cyrano said, "Perhaps this match might have ended in another fashion if we had not been interrupted."

The fellow must be in great pain, but he was not showing it. Those black eyes burned as if they were those of Satan himself.

"Throw down your sword, sir, and I will bind your wound."

"Go to hell!"

"Very well, sir. But I wish you a speedy recovery."

"Come on, Cyrano," Cabell said;

For the first time, Cyrano heard the shots. They were coming from the port side, which meant that the defenders had worked their way around to a closer position to the helicopter.

Cabell continued, "The chopper's been hit several times. And we'll have to run through their fire to get to it."

"Very well, Richard," Cyrano said. He pointed at the walkie-talkie fastened to Sturtevant's belt.

"My dear fellow, why don't you summon Boynton to this side? Then we can board in comparative safety."

"Yeah. I should have thought of that."

Cabell bound a cloth ripped from a corpse around the wound in the Frenchman's arm. The dark man's skin was greyish, and his eyes had lost their fire. As the helicopter settled down near them, Cyrano stepped forward and, using his epee, knocked the other's from his grasp. He said nothing; he did not resist as Cyrano tied a cloth around the wound in his thigh.

"Your comrades can give you more than first aid when they arrive," Cyrano said.

He ran to the machine and climbed in. Boynton took it up before the door was closed, sending it at an angle up-River. John, still completely naked, was slumped in a seat in the second row. Cyrano, looking at him, said, "Get some cloths on him. Then tie his hands and his feet."

He looked down. There were about twenty men on the flight deck. Where had the others come from? They were shooting away, their guns flashing like sex-crazed fireflies. But they had no chance of hitting their target. Did they not know that their captain was aboard, that they might hit him? Apparently not.

Something hit him in the back of his head. He was floating somewhere in a dark greyness while faraway voices said peculiar things. The ugly face of his childhood schoolteacher, the village cure, loomed before him. The brutal fellow had often beaten his student, rapping him savagely with a stick on the body and on the head. At the age of twelve, Cyrano, desperate, mad with rage, had attacked the parish priest, knocked him down, kicked him, and beaten him with his own stick.

Now the apish features, growing ever larger, swept through him. And he began to regain his senses.

Boynton was yelling, "I can't believe it! He got away!"

Cabell was saying, "He rammed his elbow into my ribs, and he kicked Cyrano in the head!"

The chopper was tilted so that he could look down through the still unclosed door. A searchlight from the boat briefly caught the king's naked body. His arms were flailing in an effort to keep himself upright. Then John had disappeared into the darkness.

"He couldn't survive!" Boynton said. "It's at least a thirty-meter fall!"

They would not be able to go back down and make sure. Not only were some shooting at the chopper, others were running now to a rocket battery. Though there was no chance the pistol shots could hit the chopper, the heat-seeking rockets would be .unavoidable unless Boynton got the machine to a safe distance.

However, Boynton was not the man to be so easily frightened. And he was undoubtedly infuriated that their prisoner had escaped.

Now he was flying the copter, not away, but toward the boat. He was bringing it to a point about 90 meters opposite the rockets. There went the four rockets the machine carried, flames spurting from their tails.

And there went the battery in a huge ball of flame and a cloud of smoke, bodies and pieces of deck and metal flying on all sides.

"That'll stop them!" Boynton said.

Sturtevant said, "How about strafing them?"

Cyrano was startled. "What? Oh, use the machine gun? No, let us depart with speed. If there's one survivor, he could get to another rocket battery, and we'd be done for. We have failed our mission and lost too many brave fellows to risk more casualties."

"I don't see how we've failed,'' Boynton said. "Sure, we didn't bring John back, but he is dead. And it'll be a long, long time before the boat is ready to operate."

"You think John is dead, eh?" Cyrano said. "I would like to believe that. But I will not say for certain that he is dead until I see his corpse."

67

Groaning with pain, the crew of the Jules Verne quickly checked themselves for injuries. Three had ribs that hurt so badly they were not sure they were not cracked or broken. Frigate thought that his neck muscles were either torn or severely strained. Tex and Frisco had bloody noses, and the latter's knee was paining him. Pogaas' forehead was skinned and bleeding. Only Nur was unhurt.

There was little time to worry about themselves. The balloon was now rising but was drifting away from the mountain. The storm clouds were disappearing as swiftly as burglars who hear a police siren. Fortunately, the light system was still working. Frisco could see the flight instruments. Nur got a flashlight, and he and Frisco applied a thin liquid to the pipe connections. Nur, examining these through a magnifying glass, reported that he could see no bubbles. Apparently, no hydrogen was escaping.

Nur opened the top hatch, and he and Pogaas climbed out onto the load ring. While the Swazi directed the beam of the flashlight, Nur went up the ropes like a monkey. He could not get close enough to the neck of the bag to apply a paste. But he did report that the envelope seemed to be tight around the entrance of the pipes.

Frisco heard this with skepticism. "Yeah, they seem to be O.K. But we can't really tell unless we land and deflate the bag."