intrepidity, and, clapping his foot to the door, which was none of
the stoutest, with the execution and despatch of a petard, split it into
a thousand pieces. This sudden execution had an immediate effect upon
the apprentice, who retreated with great precipitation, and escaped at
a postern; but the master placed himself, like another Hercules, in
the breach; and when Pipes, brandishing his cudgel, stepped forward to
engage him, leveled his weapon with such force and dexterity at his
head, that had the skull been made of penetrable stuff, the iron edge
must have cleft his pate in twain. Casemated as he was, the instrument
cut sheer even to the bone, on which it struck with such amazing
violence, that sparks of real fire were produced by the collision.
And let not the incredulous reader pretend to doubt the truth of this
phenomenon, until he shall have first perused the ingenious Peter
Kolben's Natural History of the Cape of Good Hope, where the inhabitants
commonly used to strike fire with the shin-bones of lions which had been
killed in that part of Africa.

Pipes, though a little disconcerted, far from being disabled by the
blow, in a trice retorted the compliment with his truncheon, which, had
not his antagonist expeditiously slipped his head aside, would have
laid him breathless across his own threshold; but, happily for him, he
received the salutation upon his right shoulder, which crashed beneath
the stroke, and the hoe dropped instantly from his tingling hand. Tom,
perceiving, and being unwilling to forego, the advantage he had gained,
darted his head into the bosom of this son of earth, and overturned him
on the plain, being himself that instant assaulted by the mastiff, who
fastened upon the outside of his thigh. Feeling himself incommoded by
this assailant in his rear, he quitted the prostrate gardener to the
resentment of his associates, who poured upon him in shoals, and turning
about, laid hold with both his hands of this ferocious animal's throat,
which he squeezed with such incredible force and perseverance, that the
creature quitted his hold; his tongue lolled out of his jaws, the blood
started from his eyes, and he swung a lifeless trunk between the hands
of his vanquisher.

It was well for his master that he did not longer exist: for by this
time he was overwhelmed by such a multitude of foes, that his whole body
scarce afforded points of contact to all the fists that drummed upon
him; consequently, t