"Now had the Dutchmen snatched a huge repast," and, finding themselves wonderfully encouraged and animated thereby, prepared to take the field. Expectation, says the writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript--expectation now stood on stilts. The world forgot to turn round, or rather stood still, that it might witness the affray, like a round-bellied alderman watching the combat of two chivalrous flies upon his jerkin. The eyes of all mankind, as usual in such cases, were turned upon Fort Christina. The sun, like a little man in a crowd at a puppet-show, scampered about the heavens, popping his head here and there, and endeavoring to get a peep between the unmannerly clouds that obtruded themselves in his way. The historians filled their inkhorns; the poets went without their dinners, either that they might buy paper and goose-quills or because they could not get anything to eat; Antiquity scowled sulkily out of its grave to see itself outdone, while even Posterity stood mute, gazing in gaping ecstasy of retrospection on the eventful field. The immortal deities, who whilom had seen service at the "affair" of Troy, now mounted their feather-bed clouds and sailed over the plain, or mingled among the combatants in different disguises, all itching to have a finger in the pie. Jupiter sent off his thunderbolt to a noted coppersmith to have it furbished up for the direful occasion. The noted bully Mars stuck two horse-pistols into his belt, shouldered a rusty firelock, and gallantly swaggered at the elbow of the Swedes as a drunken corporal; while Apollo trudged in their rear as a bandy-legged fifer, playing most villainously out of tune. On the other hand, the ox-eyed Juno, who had gained a pair of black eyes overnight in one of her curtain lectures with old Jupiter, displayed her haughty beauties on a baggage wagon; while Vulcan halted as a club-footed blacksmith lately promoted to be a captain of militia. All was silent awe or bustling preparation: War reared his horrid front, gnashed loud his iron fangs, and shook his direful crest of bristling bayonets.