otty sort of
hemlock of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though
much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors,
like anvils, will stand a deal of hard hammering. Especially in the
old knight-errant times. For at the battle of Brevieux in Flanders,
my glorious old gossiping ancestor, Froissart, informs me, that ten
good knights, being suddenly unhorsed, fell stiff and powerless to
the plain, fatally encumbered by their armor. Whereupon, the rascally
burglarious peasants, their foes, fell to picking their visors; as
burglars, locks; or oystermen, oysters; to get at their lives. But
all to no purpose. And at last they were fain to ask aid of a
blacksmith; and not till then, were the inmates of the armor
dispatched. Now it was deemed very hard, that the mysterious state-
prisoner of France should be riveted in an iron mask; but these
knight-errants did voluntarily prison themselves in their own iron
Bastiles; and thus helpless were murdered there-in. Days of chivalry
these, when gallant chevaliers died chivalric deaths!

And this was the epic age, over whose departure my late eloquent and
prophetic friend and correspondent, Edmund Burke, so movingly
mourned. Yes, they were glorious times. But no sensible man, given to
quiet domestic delights, would exchange his warm fireside and
muffins, for a heroic bivouac, in a wild beechen wood, of a raw gusty
morning in Normandy; every knight blowing his steel-gloved fingers,
and vainly striving to cook his cold coffee in his helmet.

CHAPTER XXV
Peril A Peace-Maker

A few days passed: the brigantine drifting hither and thither, and
nothing in sight but the sea, when forth again on its stillness rung
Annatoo's domestic alarum. The truce was up. Most egregiously had the
lady infringed it; appropriating to herself various objects
previously disclaimed in favor of Samoa. Besides, forever on the
prowl, she was perpetually going up and down; with untiring energy,
exploring every nook and cranny; carrying off her spoils and
diligently secreting them. Having little idea of feminine
adaptations, she pilfered whatever came handy:--iron hooks, dollars,
bolts, hatchets, and stopping not at balls of marline and sheets of
copper. All this, poor Samoa would have borne with what patience he
might, rather than again renew the war, were it not, that the
audacious dame charged him with peculations upon her own private
stores; though of any such thing he was inno