the rocks. They'll be as
good a breastwork from our side as from theirs!"

You will read in the histories that the Tory helpers of Ferguson fought
as men with halters round their necks; and so, indeed, a-many of them
did. But though they were most pitiless enemies of ours, I bear them
witness that they did fight well and bravely, and not as men who fight
for fear's sake.

And they were most bravely officered. Major Ferguson, boldly conspicuous
in a white linen hunting-shirt drawn on over his uniform, was here and
there and everywhere, and always in the place where the bullets flew
thickest. His left hand had been hurt at the first patriot gun fire, but
it still held the silver whistle to his lips, and the shrill skirling of
the little pipe was the loyalist rallying signal. Captain de Peyster,
too, did ample justice to the uniform he wore; and when Campbell's
Virginians gained the summit at the far end of the hilltop, 'twas de
Peyster who led the bayonet charge that forced the patriot riflemen
some little way down the slope.

But these are digressions. No man sees more of a battle than that little
circle of which he is the center; and the fighting was hot enough at the
wagon barricade to keep both Tybee and me from knowing at the time what
was going on beyond our narrow range of sight or hearing. You must
picture, therefore, for yourselves, a very devils' pandemonium let loose
upon the little hilltop so soon as the mountain men gained their vantage
ground at the fronting of the rock breastwork; cries; frantic shouts of
"God save the king!" yells fierce and wordless; men in red and men in
homespun rushing madly hither and yon in a vain attempt to repel a front
and rear attack at the same instant. 'Twas a hell set free, with no
quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.

In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
and let me die a soldier's death.

So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with who