saw fire and sword in his iron countenance, and forgot to light their
pipes in breathless suspense.

His first words were to rate his council soundly for having wasted in idle
debate and party feud the time which should have been devoted to putting
the city in a state of defence. He was particularly indignant at those
brawlers who had disgraced the councils of the province by empty
bickerings and scurrilous invectives against an absent enemy. He now
called upon them to make good their words by deeds, as the enemy they had
defied and derided was at the gate. Finally, he informed them of the
summons he had received to surrender, but concluded by swearing to defend
the province as long as Heaven was on his side, and he had a wooden leg to
stand upon; which warlike sentence he emphasized by a thwack with the flat
of his sword upon the table that quite electrified his auditors.

The privy councillors who had long since been brought into as perfect
discipline as were ever the soldiers of the great Frederick, knew there
was no use in saying a word, so lighted their pipes, and smoked away in
silence like fat and discreet councillors. But the burgomasters, being
inflated with considerable importance and self-sufficiency acquired at
popular meetings, were not so easily satisfied. Mustering up fresh spirit,
when they found there was some chance of escaping from their present
jeopardy without the disagreeable alternative of fighting, they requested
a copy of the summons to surrender, that they might show it to a general
meeting of the people.

So insolent and mutinous a request would have been enough to have roused
the gorge of the tranquil Van Twiller himself--what, then, must have been
its effect upon the great Stuyvesant, who was not only a Dutchman, a
governor, and a valiant wooden-legged soldier to boot, but withal a man of
the most stomachful and gunpowder disposition? He burst forth into a blaze
of indignation--swore not a mother's son of them should see a syllable of
it; that as to their advice or concurrence, he did not care a whiff of
tobacco for either; that they might go home and go to bed like old women,
for he was determined to defend the colony himself without the assistance
of them or their adherents! So saying, he tucked his sword under his arm,
cocked his hat upon his head, and girding up his loins, stumped
indignantly out of the council chamber, everybody making room for him as
he passed.

No sooner was he gon