e furious than ever.

"Enraged to see his military stores laid waste, the stout Risingh,
collecting all his forces, aimed a mighty blow full at the hero's
crest. In vain did his fierce little cocked hat oppose its course.
The biting steel clove through the stubborn ram beaver, and would
have cracked the crown of any one not endowed with supernatural
hardness of head; but the brittle weapon shivered in pieces on the
skull of Hardkoppig Piet, shedding a thousand sparks, like beams of
glory, round his grizzly visage.

"The good Peter reeled with the blow, and turning up his eyes beheld
a thousand suns, besides moons and stars, dancing about the
firmament; at length, missing his footing, by reason of his wooden
leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the
surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame, had he not been
received into a cushion softer than velvet, which Providence, or
Minerva, or St. Nicholas, or some cow, had benevolently prepared for
his reception.

"The furious Risingh, in despite of the maxim, cherished by all true
knights, that 'fair play is a jewel,' hastened to take advantage of
the hero's fall; but, as he stooped to give a fatal blow, Peter
Stuyvesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his wooden leg,
which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in his
cerebellum. The bewildered Swede staggered with the blow, and the
wary Peter seizing a pocket-pistol, which lay hard by, discharged it
full at the head of the reeling Risingh. Let not my reader mistake;
it was not a murderous weapon loaded with powder and ball, but a
little sturdy stone pottle charged to the muzzle with a double dram
of true Dutch courage, which the knowing Antony Van Corlear carried
about him by way of replenishing his valor, and which had dropped
from his wallet during his furious encounter with the drummer. The
hideous weapon sang through the air, and true to its course as was
the fragment of a rock discharged at Hector by bully Ajax,
encountered the head of the gigantic Swede with matchless violence.

"This heaven-directed blow decided the battle. The ponderous
pericranium of General Jan Risingh sank upon his breast; his knees
tottered under him; a deathlike torpor seized upon his frame, and he
tumbled to the eart