Two stout infantrymen were summoned, and they dragged the traitor to the door, despite his struggles.
“Don’t send me back to the British,” shrieked he, mad with fear, “don’t send me back to my death. See, upon my knees, I beg of you. I will do anything—tell you anything—and not ask a penny in payment; only don’t send me back; don’t send me back.”
The coward was dragged gasping, livid, and screaming away. Tom heard afterward that Mark had been driven back into Yorktown by a half dozen French and American soldiers who pricked him with the points of their bayonets whenever he showed a disposition to lag. What happened upon his arrival there Tom never knew; at any rate that was the last he ever saw of him.
On the evening of the next day—the 9th of October—the American batteries opened on the town at a distance of some six hundred yards; and so heavy was the fire that many of the British guns were dismounted and silenced. Shells and red hot balls reached the enemy’s frigates in the harbor, several of which were burned. By the evening of the 11th the Americans had advanced to within three hundred yards of the British lines.
On the 14th Tom Deering participated in an attack upon a redoubt, on the left, and helped to carry it by assault; almost at the same time a party of gallant French troops carried another, on the same side. These were included in the works of the besiegers. Nearly a hundred pieces of heavy ordnance were now brought to bear upon the British works, and with such effect that the fortifications were beaten down and almost every gun rendered useless.
Tarleton’s force was posted at Gloucester Point, across the York River; and, hoping to break through the detachment of French which Washington had placed in the rear of that place, Cornwallis attempted to cross and join hands with him. But a violent storm came up and scattered his boats after one division had succeeded in making the crossing. The result was that on the 19th a capitulation was made, and 7,000 British troops were surrendered to Washington.
Tom entered the captured town with the victorious general and his officers. He stood upon a broken quay, with Cole, looking about at the wreck which the American gunnery had made, a feeling of sadness mingling with the joy of the triumph. Suddenly Cole’s strange cry sounded, and gazing in the direction which the giant’s finger pointed he saw the Defence, like a great bird with snowy, outstretched wings, come scudding up the river. The schooner had hardly lowered her sails and plunged her anchor into the waters when the two, having pulled out in a bateau, were upon her decks.
“Keel haul me, Phil,” cried the voice of Captain Deering, “it’s Tom. It’s Tom! Your son!”
“Father!” cried the youth. “Father! Where are you?”
He had not caught sight of the man leaning against the mizzen mast, but who now turned and sprang toward him.