Peter, watching his opportunity, aimed a blow, enough to cleave his
adversary to the very chine; but Risingh nimbly raising his sword,
warded it off so narrowly that glancing on one side, it shaved away a
huge canteen in which he carried his liquor: thence, pursuing its
trenchant course, it severed off a deep coat-pocket stored with bread
and cheese; which provant, rolling among the armies, occasioned a
fearful scrambling between the Swedes and Dutchmen, and made the general
battle to wax ten times more 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, beside 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 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 bobmajors 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 t