“Very well, gentlemen.” Tom quietly put down the glass and took up a goblet of water. “I will drink a toast with you.”
“Of course he will,” laughed Jasper Harwood, his hard face glowing with triumph at what he took to be an exhibition of cowardice.
“I never had the slightest doubt of it,” sneered Mark.
“Yes, gentlemen, I will give you a toast that any honest man can drink.” He looked about at the expectant British officers and then at the sneering Tories; his voice was steady, his hand never trembled. “I give you the Provincial Congress!” Amid dead silence he lifted the cool water to his lips and took a sip; then he threw the glass into the middle of the table, where it smashed into a hundred pieces, as he shouted, “Down with the king!”
The dragoons grasped their sabres, but he was through the door, out at a window and upon his horse’s back before they could act. They crowded through the front door and ran along the path toward the place where their horses were; but Tom was already out upon the road waving his hat at them defiantly. Wheeling his fleet steed he dashed down the narrow road, then suddenly pulled up with a cry of delight. Almost directly in his path was Cole, a wide grin upon his ebony face; upon a long rope he had the dragoons’ horses, and at the word was ready to make off with them. The British officers discovered their loss almost at the same moment, and they ran down the rough road, brandishing their sabres and shouting a volley of most dreadful threats.
“We’ll take them along with us, Cole,” said Tom, laughing. “Lord Campbell can get another supply, but Colonel Moultrie would appreciate them very much.”
So, despite the threats that rang in his ears, Tom Deering rode gaily away behind his first capture from the enemy. Seeing that he had no intention of surrendering their mounts, the dragoons soon gave up the chase and returned in no very sweet tempers to the mansion of their Tory host.
Late that night, Lieutenant Gordon Cheyne, of Tarleton’s Dragoons, rode slowly, upon a borrowed horse, along a deserted road in the neighborhood of Charleston. Suddenly, as he turned a bend, and just at a place where the woods grew thick upon each side of the road, a horseman rode into his path and presented a pistol at his head.
“Stand!” ordered the newcomer.