It had taken the roomful a moment to recover their equipoise after the fright, but now Squire Hennion spoke up:
“So yer retreatin’ some more, hey?”
The officer, who had been facing the fire in an evident attempt to dry and warm himself, faced about sharply: “Retreat!” he answered bitterly. “Can you do anything else with troops who won’t fight; who in the most critical moment desert by fifties, by hundreds, ay, by whole regiments? Six thousand men have left us since we crossed into Jersey. A brigade of your own troops—of the State we had come to fight for—left us yesterday morning, when news came that Cornwallis was advancing upon our position at Newark. What can we do but retreat?”
“Well, may I be dummed!” ejaculated Bagby, “if it is n’t Squire Meredith’s runaway bondsman, and dressed as fine as a fivepence!”
The officer laughed scornfully. “Ay,” he assented. “’T is the fashion of the land to run away, so ’t is only à la mode that bondsmen and slaves should imitate their betters.”
“Yer need n’t mount us Americans so hard, seem’ as yer took mortal good care ter git in the front ranks of them as wuz retreatin’,” asserted an Invincible.
I undertook to guide the retreat, because I knew the roads of the region,” retorted the officer, hotly, evidently stung by the remark; then he laughed savagely and continued: “And how comes it, gentlemen all, that you are not gloriously serving your country? Cornwallis, with nine thousand picked infantry, is but a twenty miles to the northward; Knyphausen and six thousand Hessians landed at Perth Amboy this morning, and would have got between us and Philadelphia but for our rapid retreat. Canst sit and booze yourself with flip and swizzle when there are such opportunities for valour? Hast forgotten the chorus you were for ever singing?” Brereton sang out with spirit:—
“‘In Freedom we’re born, and, like Sons of the Brave,
We’ll never surrender,
But swear to defend her,
And scorn to survive, if unable to save.’”
“’T ain’t no good fighting when we hav n’t a general,” snarled Bagby.
“Now damn you for a pack of dirty, low-minded curs!” swore the officer, his face blazing with anger. “Here you’ve a general who is risking life, and fortune, and station; and then you blame him because he cannot with a handful of raw troops defeat thirty thousand regulars. There’s not a general in Europe—not the great Frederick himself—who’d so much as have tried to make head against such odds, much less have done so much with so little. After a whole summer campaign what have the British to show? They’ve gained the territory within gunshot of their fleet; but at White Plains, though they were four to one, they dared not attack us, and valiantly turned tail about, preferring to overrun undefended country to assaulting our position. I tell you General Washington is the honestest, bravest, most unselfish man in the world, and you are a pack of—”