When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion.  For answer the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him.  Never was a man nearer his death.  In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut him down.

’Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel’s life, and not the unnamed “sergeant,” as the histories have it.  Having neither a sword nor the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled his man as neatly as you please.  Seeing his fellow sabreur drop his weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of his sword arm.  This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were now at it, hammer and tongs.  Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain our colonel was far the cooler.  So when Tarleton made to end it with a savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found his antagonist’s sword hand.

At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,—­it hangs now over the chimney-piece in Mr. Washington’s town house in Charleston,—­gave the signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse, wheeled and galloped on.  But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so we did not come off scatheless.

This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a little of the cream from our great and glorious victory.  ’Twas no serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.

The battle fought and won,—­’twas over and done with two full hours before noon,—­Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the swiftest after-doing on our part.  With Greene near a hundred miles away, and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours’ gallop to the southward on Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.

Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the victory to Greene’s camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan’s men hard at it, burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.