the
officer, he tore the instrument into atoms, and dashing them toward
their proprietor, exclaimed--

"Now, captain, what's the worth of your authority? Be off now in a
hurry, or I shall fire upon you in short order!"

We may not describe the furious anger of the Georgian. Irritated beyond
the control of a proper caution, he precipitately--and without that due
degree of deliberation which must have taught him the madness and
inefficacy of any assault by his present force upon an enemy so
admirably disposed of--gave the command to fire; and after the
ineffectual discharge, which had no other result than to call forth a
shout of derision from the besieged, he proceeded to charge the barrier,
himself fearlessly leading the way. The first effort to break through
the barricades was sufficient to teach him the folly of the design and a
discharge from the defences bringing down two of his men warned him of
the necessity of duly retrieving his error. He saw the odds, and
retreated with order and in good conduct, until he sheltered the whole
troop under a long hill, within rifle-shot of the enemy, whence,
suddenly filing a detachment obliquely to the left, he made his
arrangements for the passage of a narrow gorge, having something of the
character of a road, and, though excessively broken and uneven, having
been frequently used as such. It wound its way to the summit of a large
hill, which stood parallel with the defences, and fully commanded them;
and the descent of the gorge, on the opposite side, afforded him as good
an opportunity, in a charge, of riding the squatters down, as the summit
for picking them off singly with his riflemen.

He found the necessity of great circumspection, however, in the brief
sample of controversy already given him; and with a movement in front,
therefore, of a number of his force--sufficient, by employing the
attention of the enemy in that quarter, to cover and disguise his
present endeavor--he marshalled fifteen of his force apart from the
rest, leading them himself, as the most difficult enterprise, boldly up
the narrow pass. The skirmishing was still suffered, therefore, to
continue on the ground where it had begun, whenever a momentary exposure
of the person of besieged or besieger afforded any chance for a
successful shot. Nor was this game very hazardous to either party. The
beleaguered force, as we have seen, was well protected. The assailants,
having generally dismounted, their horse