rmor, but returned the rich apparel
and the body to his friends in the most gentlemanly manner.

Captain Smith was perhaps too serious a knight to see the humor of
these encounters, but he does not lack humor in describing them, and
he adopted easily the witty courtesies of the code he was illustrating.
After he had gathered two heads, and the siege still dragged, he became
in turn the challenger, in phrase as courteously and grimly facetious as
was permissible, thus:

"To delude time, Smith, with so many incontradictible perswading
reasons, obtained leave that the Ladies might know he was not so much
enamored of their servants' heads, but if any Turke of their ranke would
come to the place of combat to redeem them, should have also his, upon
like conditions, if he could winne it."

This considerate invitation was accepted by a person whom Smith, with
his usual contempt for names, calls "Bonny Mulgro." It seems difficult
to immortalize such an appellation, and it is a pity that we have not
the real one of the third Turk whom Smith honored by killing. But
Bonny Mulgro, as we must call the worthiest foe that Smith's prowess
encountered, appeared upon the field. Smith understands working up
a narration, and makes this combat long and doubtful. The challenged
party, who had the choice of weapons, had marked the destructiveness of
his opponent's lance, and elected, therefore, to fight with pistols and
battle-axes. The pistols proved harmless, and then the battle-axes came
in play, whose piercing bills made sometime the one, sometime the other,
to have scarce sense to keep their saddles. Smith received such a blow
that he lost his battle-axe, whereat the Turks on the ramparts set up
a great shout. "The Turk prosecuted his advantage to the utmost of
his power; yet the other, what by the readiness of his horse, and
his judgment and dexterity in such a business, beyond all men's
expectations, by God's assistance, not only avoided the Turke's
violence, but having drawn his Faulchion, pierced the Turke so under the
Culets throrow backe and body, that although he alighted from his horse,
he stood not long ere he lost his head, as the rest had done."

There is nothing better than this in all the tales of chivalry, and John
Smith's depreciation of his inability to equal Caesar in describing his
own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the Duchess of Richmond, must
be taken as an excess of modesty. We are prepared to hear that the