“Pick that insolent fellow off, one of you,” was the order; and in an instant a dozen rifles were lifted, but the man was gone.  A hat appearing above the cliff, was bored with several bullets; and the speaker, who laughed heartily at the success of his trick, now resumed his position on the cliff, with the luckless hat perched upon the staff on which it had given them the provocation to fire.  He laughed and shouted heartily at the contrivance, and hurled the victim of their wasted powder down among them.  Much chagrined, and burning with indignation, Fullam briefly cried out to his men to advance quickly.  The person who had hitherto addressed him was our old acquaintance Forrester, to whom, in the division of the duties, this post had been assigned.  He spoke again:—­

“You’d better not, captain, I advise you.  It will be dangerous if you come farther.  Don’t trouble us, now; and be off, as soon as you can, out of harm’s way.  Your bones will be all the better for it; and I declare I don’t like to hurt such a fine-looking chap if I can possibly avoid it.  Now take a friend’s advice; ’twill be all the better for you, I tell you.”

The speaker evidently meant well, so far as it was possible for one to mean well who was commissioned to do, and was, in fact, doing ill.  The Georgian, however, only the more indignant at the impertinence of the address, took the following notice of it, uttered in the same breath with an imperative command to his own men to hasten their advance:—­

“Disperse yourselves, scoundrels, and throw down your arms!—­on the instant disperse!  Lift a hand, or pull a trigger upon us, and every man shall dangle upon the branches of the first tree!”

As he spoke, leading the way, he drove his rowels into the sides of his animal; and, followed by his troop, bounded fearlessly up the gorge.

CHAPTER XIV.

CATASTROPHE—­COLLETON’S DISCOVERY.

It is time to return to Ralph Colleton, who has quite too long escaped our consideration.  The reader will doubtless remember, with little difficulty, where and under what circumstances we left him.  Provoked by the sneer and sarcasm of the man whom at the same moment he most cordially despised, we have seen him taking a position in the controversy, in which his person, though not actually within the immediate sphere of action, was nevertheless not a little exposed to some of its risks.  This position, with fearless indifference, he continued to maintain, unshrinkingly and without interruption, throughout the whole period and amid all the circumstances of the conflict.  There was something of a boyish determination in this way to assert his courage, which his own sense inwardly rebuked; yet such is the nature of those peculiarities in southern habits and opinions, to which we have already referred, on all matters which relate to personal prowess and a masculine defiance of danger, that, even