ould ring with the noise of his grand achievement. To be sure,
with respect to the prisoner of war, his little master, with that
fellow-feeling which makes us wondrous kind, had said but the hour
before, "Let him go home to his mother." But our hero, colored though he
was, had far too genuine a love of glory ever to allow an opportunity
for the indulgence of his passion to escape him, no matter at what
expense it might be to others, in life, liberty, and dearest affections.
And here again, and for the third time, may we liken the Fighting Nigger
to Alexander the Great, to Napoleon the Great, or, more fitly still, to
his great-grandfather, Mumbo Jumbo the Great, the far-famed giant-king
of Congo. By the way, I am just here reminded that I have forgotten to
state, and much to my surprise, that Big Black Burl was believed
throughout the Paradise to be the great-grandson of the great Mumbo
Jumbo, and as such was in verity the case, the remarkable character of
our hero admits of plausible explanation. Who Mumbo Jumbo really was I
must confess that, with due respect to authentic history, I am not
exactly prepared to affirm; though that he must have been a man of
immense consequence in his day was fairly to be inferred from the fact
of his having made in Africa a noise so loud as to have been heard, a
full half century afterward, beyond the Alleghany Mountains--that, too,
by a people so far behind the times as to know nothing whatever of even
so redoubtable a man as Baron Munchausen.

But to return to our war-path, and be just. The Fighting Nigger had no
thought of using the life, liberty, and dearest affections thrown by the
chances of war upon his mercy, excepting so far as to take his prisoner
home with him as a trophy of victory; which done, then should he be
allowed to return to his own people, bird-free, without the loss of a
feather. As he had not killed the Indian, how could he without gross
violation of the rules of civilized warfare take his scalp? And without
scalps to show for proof, let him but dare blow his own trumpet, and he
should be blazed throughout the land as a windy, lying braggart.
Therefore, as neither party in question could quit that place without
the scalp--the one having a natural right, the other a belligerent right
to the same--expedient was it that the party who enjoyed but the natural
right should be taken bodily to the settlements, there to appear as a
living witness to that prowess in arms whic