By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham’s men, and the king’s muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by platoon and volley fire.  Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view of the situation.

“By the Lord Harry!” he cried, “’tis high time Joe Graham was getting his lads in order for a foot race.  Once those fellows come ashore they’ll play hare and hounds with us to the king’s taste.  Keep your eye on the nags, Jack.  It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a belated retreat.”

We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank.  As I looked to make sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of hoofs on the Appleby road.  I made sure this would be General Davidson bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late.  O’Hara’s men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree fringe sing with musket balls.

“’Tis our cue to run away!” Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet.  “To the horses!”

But now we were too late.  Davidson’s men were between us and the scrub oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.

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.