It was not a retreat, not a flight; it was a riot, a horrible saturnalia of smoke and fire and awful sound. As a maddened panther, wounded, rushes forth to deal death right and left, even tearing its own flesh with tooth and claw, the British column burst south across the land, crazed with wounds, famished, athirst, blood-mad, dealing death and ruin to all that lay before it.
Terrible was the vengeance that followed it, hovered on its gasping flanks, scourged its dwindling ranks, which withered under the searching fire from every tuft of bushes, every rock, every tree-trunk.
Already the ghastly pageant had rushed past us, leaving a crimson trail in its wake; already the old tavern door was flung wide, and our Minute Men were running down the Boston Road and along the ridges on either side, firing as they came on.
I, with Mount and the Weasel, hung to their left flank till two o'clock, when, about half a mile from Lexington Meeting-house, we heard cannon, and understood that the relief troops from Boston had come up.
Then, knowing that there were guns enough and to spare without ours, we shouldered our hot rifles and trudged back to "Buckman's Tavern," through the dust, behind a straw-covered wain which was driving slowly under the heat of an almost vertical sun.
Mount, parched with thirst, hailed the driver of the wain, asking him if he carried cider.
"Only a wounded man," he said, "most dead o' the red dragoons."
I stepped to the slowly moving wagon and looked over the tail-board down into the straw.
"Shemuel!" I cried.
"Shemuel!" roared Mount.