For very shame some of the fugitives halted, and Tom began rapidly reforming them. But, just then, the British cavalry plunged forward, and the hope of staying the panic was gone forever. The devoted Continentals—Maryland and Delaware troops, all trained soldiers—bore the brunt of the action. De Kalb was at their head, for Gates had ridden away to the rear in the desperate hope of rallying the militia; the artillery was in the hands of the enemy, and the regulars who continued to stand fast numbered but nine hundred, as opposed to two thousand of the best troops in the British service.
But these stout hearts, undismayed by the flight of their comrades, not only resisted the attack of the enemy, but actually carried the bayonet into their ranks. The combatants rushed and reeled with locked weapons; but the struggle could not last, for when the British cavalry returned from pursuing the fugitives their sabres gave the finishing stroke to the affair. The heroic De Kalb fell, pierced by fourteen wounds, and at the fall of their leader the rank and file broke and fled from the field, leaving everything behind them.
When darkness closed in once more it found General Gates, with a shattered remnant of his once formidable force, flying along the roads toward North Carolina. As for Tom Deering, he was on his way through the swamps to rejoin Marion, his eyes full of unshed tears and his heart full of the bitterness that comes with defeat.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW TOM BRAVED THE TORIES
“Cole!”
A movement of the giant slave’s eyes showed that he heard. He and his young master had dismounted upon the edge of a clump of woods and were carefully surveying a large brick mansion that stood in the midst of a well-kept park.
“I don’t like the looks of things,” said the young swamp-rider. “There are strangers in Mr. Foster’s mansion, Cole, and we had better be sure of who they are before we venture into the open.”
Cole signified his entire approval of this course; so they tied their horses well among the trees and then crawled back to the verge of the wood once more.
Some months had passed since the defeat of Gates; Colonel Marion had now begun to make himself felt in the struggle, and his sudden ambuscades and unlooked-for onslaughts had made his name a terror to British soldier and Tory alike. Not a little of the credit of all this was due to the devotion to duty shown by Tom Deering and his faithful slave. The hoof-marks of Sultan and Cole’s bay charger, Dando, were imprinted upon every mile of territory between the North Edisto River and the Little Peedee. The courses of the Congaree and the Wateree were as familiar to them as though there were not a fresh danger lurking in every turn they made.
They had the hardihood to even penetrate the region about Orangeburg and Ninety-Six in search of information as to the enemy’s movements; and the news which they gathered frequently led to disaster for the British in the shape of a severe loss of supplies, or the destruction of a flying column proceeding upon a raid.