How I managed to reach the fort, I never knew. I do not remember that the savages carried me; I have no recollection of walking. When the gate lanthorn was set that night, a sentry noticed me creeping in the weeds at the moat's edge. He shot at me and gave the alarm. Fortunately, he missed me.
All that evening I lay in a hot sickness on a cot in the casemates. They say I babbled and whimpered till the doctor had finished cupping me, but after that I rambled little, and, towards sunrise, was sleeping.
My own memories begin with an explosion, which shook my cot and brought me stumbling blindly out of bed, to find Jack Mount firing through a loophole and watching me, while he reloaded, with curious satisfaction.
He guided me back to my cot, and summoned the regiment's surgeon; between them they bathed me and fed me and got my shirt and leggings on me.
At first I could scarcely make out to stand on my legs. From crown to sole I ached and throbbed; my vision was strangely blurred, so that I saw things falling in all directions.
I think the regiment's surgeon, who appeared to be very young, was laying his plans to bleed me again, but I threatened him if he laid a finger on me, and Mount protested that I was fit to fight or feast with any man in Tryon County.
The surgeon, saying I should lie abed, mixed me a most filthy draught, which I swallowed. Had I been able, I should have chased him into the forest for that dose. As it was, I made towards him on wavering legs, to do him a harm, whereupon he went out hastily, calling me an ass. Mount linked his great arm in mine, and helped me up to the parapet, where the Virginia militia were firing by platoons into the forest.
The freshening morning was lovely and sweet; the west winds poured into me like wine. I lay on the platform for a while, peering up at the flag flapping above me on its pine staff, then raised up on my knees and looked about.
Bands of shadow and sunlight lay across the quiet forests; the calm hills sparkled. But the blackened clearing around the fort was alive with crawling forms, moving towards the woods, darting from cover to cover, yet always advancing. They were Cresap's Maryland riflemen, reconnoitring the pines along the river, into which the soldiers beside me on the parapet were showering bullets.