’Twas slow and toilsome riding; and only the devil’s own luck, or some marvellous instinct of our horses, spared us many a stumble over roots, stones, twigs, and underbrush.  What faint light the night retained for well-accustomed eyes, had its source in the cloud-curtained moon, and that being South of us, we were hidden in the shadow of the woods.  But ’tis a thousand wonders the noise of our passage was not sooner heard, though De Lancey’s stern command for silence left no sound possible from us except that of our horses and equipments.  I fancy ’twas the loud murmur of the stream that shielded us.  But at last, as we approached the turning of the water, where we were to dismount, surround the rebels hutted upon the hill before us, creep silently upon them, and attack from all sides at a signal, there was a voice drawled out of the darkness ahead of us the challenge: 

“Who goes thar?”

We heard the click of the sentinel’s musket-lock; whereupon Captain De Lancey, in hope of gaining the time to seize him ere he could give the alarm, replied, “Friends,” and kept riding on.

“You’re a liar, Jim De Lancey!” cried back the sentinel, and fired his piece, and then (as our ears told us) fled through the woods, up the hill, toward his comrades.

There was now nothing for us but to abandon all thought of surrounding the enemy, or even, we told ourselves, of taking time to dismount and bestow our horses; unless we were willing to lose the advantage of a surprise at least partial, as we were not.  We could but charge on horseback up the hill, after the fleeing sentinel, in hope of coming upon the rebels but half-prepared.  Or rather, as we then felt, so we chose to think, foolish as the opinion was.  Indeed what could have been more foolish, less military, more like a tale of fabulous knights in some enchanted forest?  A cavalry charge, with no sort of regular formation, up a wooded hill, in a night dark enough in the open but sheer black under the thick boughs; to meet an encamped enemy at the top!  But James De Lancey’s men were noted rather for reckless dash than for military prudence; they felt best on horseback, and would accept a score of ill chances and fight in the saddle, rather than a dozen advantages and go afoot.  I think they were not displeased at their discovery by the sentinel, which gave them an excuse for a harebrained onset ahorse, in place of the tedious manoeuvre afoot that had been planned.  As for Tom and me, we were at the age when a man will dare the impossible.

So we went, trusting to the sense of our beasts, or to dumb luck, to carry us unimpeded through the black woods.  As it was, a few of the animals ran headforemost against trees, and others stumbled over roots and logs, while some of the riders had their heads knocked nearly off by coming in contact with low branches.  But a majority of us, to judge by the noise we made, arrived with our snorting, panting steeds at the hill-crest; where, in a cleared space, and fortified with felled trees, upheaved earth, forage carts, and what not, stood the improvised cabins of the rebels.