etwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.

At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate
as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards--my father would
exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great)
in a panegyric upon the Battering-Rams of the ancients--the Vinea which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.--He would tell my uncle Toby
of the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones
so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very
foundation:--he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of
the Ballista which Marcellinus makes so much rout about!--the terrible
effects of the Pyraboli, which cast fire;--the danger of the Terebra and
Scorpio, which cast javelins.--But what are these, would he say, to the
destructive machinery of corporal Trim?--Believe me, brother Toby, no
bridge, or bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this
world, can hold out against such artillery.

My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this
ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in
doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that
it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of
violent coughing: my uncle Toby leap'd up without feeling the pain upon
his groin--and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's chair,
tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and
from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief,
which he pulled out of his pocket.--The affectionate and endearing
manner in which my uncle Toby did these little offices--cut my father
thro' his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.--May my
brains be knock'd out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not
which, quoth my father to himself--if ever I insult this worthy soul
more!

Chapter 2.XVIII.

The draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to
set about another--but not upon the same model: for cardinal Alberoni's
intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly
foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and
the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all
likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily--he determined upon an
Italian bridge--(my uncle Toby, by-the-bye, was not far out of his
conjectures)--but my father, w