Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a
tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now
dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift
parrying musket-balls.
What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering
heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered
Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the
retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst
he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the
galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after
them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.
"Up with you and out of this!" cried Jennifer, setting me the example.
"We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!"
But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his
holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting
his terrible imprecations on the enemy.
Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old
man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to
his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain
regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer
shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself,
cheering his men on to the attack.
We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire,
the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British
commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the
entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.
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