Another adventure is thus related by Horry himself: "I was sent," he writes, "by General Marion to reconnoiter Georgetown. I proceeded with a guide through the woods all night. At the dawn of day, I drew near the town. I laid an ambuscade, with thirty men and three officers, near the road. About sunrise a chair appeared with two ladies escorted by two British officers. I was ready in advance with an officer to cut them off, but reflecting that they might escape, and alarm the town, which would prevent my taking greater numbers, I desisted. The officers and chair halted very near me, but soon the chair went on, and the officers galloped in retrograde into the town. Our party continued in ambush, until ten o'clock, A. M. Nothing appearing, and men and horses having eaten nothing for thirty-six hours, we were hungered, and retired to a plantation of my quartermaster's, a Mr. White, not far distant. There a curious scene took place. As soon as I entered the house, four ladies appeared, two of whom were Mrs. White and her daughter. I was asked what I wanted. I answered, food, refreshment. The other two ladies were those whom I had seen escorted by the British officers. They seemed greatly agitated, and begged most earnestly that I would go away, for the family was very poor, had no provisions of any sort—that I knew that they were Whigs, and surely would not add to their distress. So pressing were they for my immediately leaving the plantation, that I thought they had more in view than they pretended. I kept my eyes on Mrs. White, and saw she had a smiling countenance, but said nothing. Soon she left the room, and I left it also and went into the piazza, laid my cap, sword and pistols on the long bench, and walked the piazza;—when I discovered Mrs. White behind the house chimney beckoning me. I got to her, undiscovered by the young ladies, when she said: 'Colonel Horry, be on your guard; these two ladies, Miss F— and M—, are just from Georgetown; they are much frightened, and I believe the British are leaving it and may soon attack you. As to provisions, which they make such a rout about, I have plenty for your men and horses in yonder barn, but you must affect to take them by force. Hams, bacon, rice and fodder are there. You must insist on the key of the barn, and threaten to split the door with an ax if not immediately opened.' I begged her to say no more, for I was well acquainted with all such matters—to leave the ladies and every thing else to my management. She said 'Yes; but do not ruin us: be artful and cunning, or Mr. White may be hanged and all our houses burned over our heads.' We both secretly returned, she to the room where the young ladies were, and I to the piazza I had just left."
This little narrative will give some idea of the straits to which the good whig matrons of Carolina were sometimes reduced in those days. But no time was allowed Horry to extort the provisions as suggested. He had scarcely got to the piazza when his videttes gave the alarm. Two shots warned him of the approach of the foe, and forgetting that his cap, saber and pistols lay on the long bench on the piazza, Horry mounted his horse, left the inclosure, and rushed into the melée. The British were seventeen in number, well mounted and commanded by a brave fellow named Merritt. The dragoons, taken by surprise, turned in flight, and, smiting at every step, the partisans pursued them with fatal earnestness. But two men are reported to have escaped death or captivity, and they were their Captain and a Sergeant. It was in approaching to encounter Merritt that Horry discovered that he was weaponless. "My officers," says he, "in succession, came up with Captain Merritt, who was in the rear of his party, urging them forward. They engaged him. He was a brave fellow. Baxter, with pistols, fired at his breast, and missing him, retired; Postelle and Greene, with swords, engaged him; both were beaten off. Greene nearly lost his head. His buckskin breeches were cut through several inches. I almost blush to say that this one British officer beat off three Americans." The honor of the day was decidedly with Merritt, though he was beaten. He was no doubt a far better swordsman than our self-taught cavalry, with broadswords wrought out of mill-saws. Merritt abandoned his horse, and escaped to a neighboring swamp, from whence, at midnight, he got into Georgetown.
Colonel Horry, after the war, met Captain Merritt in New York, when the latter recognized him, and in the interview which followed, confessed, that although so desperate in his self-defense he was never more frightened in his life.
"Believe me, sir," said he, "when I assure you that I went out that morning with my locks as bright an auburn as ever curled upon the forehead of youth, but by the time I had crawled out of the swamp into Georgetown that night, they were as gray as a badger!"
If this is true, he must indeed have been wofully frightened, for the records of such an effect of terror are few and far between. One of Byron's heroes says that
"His locks grew white,
In a single night."
But that was with grief, and not with fear.
Horry's award of praise to the British Captain for his courage in beating off three of his own men, was both generous and ingenious, when it is considered that the Englishman was a scientific swordsman, possessing a superior weapon, while his antagonists were self-taught, and their swords, if not beaten out of "plowshares," were veritably made out of mill-saws.
In one of his numerous encounters, while his men were individually engaged and scattered through the woods around him, he suddenly found himself alone, and assailed by a Tory Captain, named Lewis, at the head of a small party. Lewis was armed with a musket, and in the act of firing, when an unexpected shot from the woods tumbled him off his horse, in the very moment when his own gun was discharged. The bullet of Lewis took effect on Horry's horse. The shot which so seasonably slew the Tory was sent by the hand of a boy named Given.