Saw you ever the hillocks of old Spanish anchors, and anchor-stocks of ancient galleons, at the bottom of Callao Bay?
The world is full of old Tower armories, and dilapidated Venetian arsenals, and rusty old rapiers.
But true warriors polish their good blades by the bright beams of the morning; and gird them on to their brave sirloins; and watch for rust spots as for foes; and by many stout thrusts and stoccadoes keep their metal lustrous and keen, as the spears of the Northern Lights charging over Greenland.
Fire from the flint is our Chevalier enraged.

He takes umbrage at the cut of some ship's keel crossing his road; and straightway runs a tilt at it; with one mad lounge thrusting his Andrea Ferrara clean through and through; not seldom breaking it short off at the haft, like a bravo leaving his poignard in the vitals of his foe.
In the case of the English ship Foxhound, the blade penetrated through the most solid part of her hull, the bow; going completely through the copper plates and timbers, and showing for several inches in the hold.

On the return of the ship to London, it was carefully sawn out; and, imbedded in the original wood, like a fossil, is still preserved.

But this was a comparatively harmless onslaught of the valiant Chevalier.

With the Rousseau, of Nantucket, it fared worse.
She was almost mortally stabbed; her assailant withdrawing his blade.
And it was only by keeping the pumps clanging, that she managed to swim into a Tahitian harbor, "heave down," and have her wound dressed by a ship-surgeon with tar and oakum.