On the next day’s march, a party of scouts captured Zaccheus, who was found on the flank of the British army with his gun, endeavoring to diminish the number of His Majesty’s forces.  He was immediately conducted to Cornwallis, who, finding out his name, took him along as a guide to the best ford on the Catawba.  Arriving at the river, the head of the army entered at the point designated by the lad, but the soldiers soon found themselves in deep water, and drawn by a rapid current down the stream.  Cornwallis, believing that the boy had purposely led him into deep water in order to embarrass his march, drew his sword, and swore he would cut off his head for his treachery.  Zaccheus replied that he had the power to do so, as he had no arms, and was his prisoner; “but, sir,” said this resolute boy, “don’t you think it would be a cowardly act for you to strike an unarmed boy with your sword.  If I had but the half of your weapon, it would not be so cowardly, but then you know, it would not be so safe.”

Cornwallis, struck by the boy’s cool courage, calmed down, told him he was a fine fellow, and that he would not hurt a hair of his head.  Having discovered that the ford was shallow enough by bearing up the stream, the British army crossed over it safely, and proceeded to Winnsboro.

On this march, Cornwallis dismissed Zaccheus, telling him to go home and take care of his mother, and to tell her to keep her boys at home.  After he reached Winnsboro, he dispatched an order to Rawdon, at Camden, to send Robin Wilson and his son John, with several others, to Charleston, carefully guarded.  Accordingly, about the 20th of November, Wilson, his son, and ten others, set off under the escort of an officer and fifteen or twenty men.  Wilson formed several plans of making his escape, but owing to the presence of large parties of the enemy, they could not be executed.  At length, being near Fort Watson, they encamped before night, the prisoners being placed in the yard, and the guard in the house and in the portico.  In a short time the arms of the guard were ordered to be stacked in the portico, a sentinel placed over them, and all others were soon busily engaged in preparing their evening meal.  The prisoners, in the meantime, having bribed a soldier to buy some whiskey, as it was a rainy day, pretended to drink freely of it themselves, and one of them seemingly more intoxicated than the rest, insisted upon treating the sentinel.  Wilson followed him, as if to prevent him from treating the sentinel, it being a breach of military order.  Watching a favorable opportunity, he seized the sentinel’s musket, and the drunken man suddenly becoming sober, seized the sentinel.  At this signal, the prisoners—­like vigilant hornets, rushed to the stacked arms in the portico, when the guard, taking the alarm, rushed out of the house.  But it was too late; the prisoners secured the arms, drove the soldiers into the house at the point of the bayonet, and the whole guard surrendered at discretion.  Unable to take off their prisoners, Wilson made them all hold up their right hands and swear never again to bear arms against the “cause of liberty, and the Continental Congress,” and then told them they might go to Charleston on parole; but if he ever found “a single mother’s son of them in arms again, he would hang him up to a tree like a dog.”