Once under the safety of the bluff, he lay there and sipped a little of the brackish water which he scooped up in his hands. There was blood on his uniform, and blood was trickling down from somewhere over his left ear, but he did not put his hand up. He did not want to know how badly he was hurt—not right now.
And yet, his own wound wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the sight of the British Army running away. Running to the barges, fleeing back to Boston, beaten almost to destruction by a mob of American farmers at a stone wall and an earthworks on a hill! What was that old tune the band played sometimes on parade? The World Turned Upside Down!
What would happen to him, he wondered, when the Yankees found him lying here? They didn’t have bayonets, most of them, so they couldn’t run him through, but there were other ways to kill a man.
But maybe they wouldn’t, all of them, kill a wounded man, any more than he would. He’d gone among them, traveled through their towns, and found there men no worse than he. And at that he remembered the knapsack and the clothing in it. He reached down; yes, it still hung at his side.
Painfully, haltingly, he pulled off the ruined uniform, the muddy scarlet and blood-stained white. Then he lay there naked in the mud a little while, under the bluff of sun-baked clay, till he had gathered strength enough to pull on the country clothes, the garb of most of the men behind the American line.
“Maybe—if they find me—they’ll think I’m one of theirs,” he muttered, “take me in with their own wounded and bind my head up—and never know.” He managed a weak smile. The last prank he’d ever play on the Yankees, he guessed, but it was worth a try.
Somehow he managed to crawl up the bank and out on the bloody grass. He lifted his eyes toward the redoubt. Could he believe what he saw? It had redcoats swarming all over it, their bayonets drawn, struggling on the parapet with the Americans, leaping down on those below.
“So the lads have come back,” he whispered faintly. “We aren’t beaten after all. I should have known it couldn’t be—not Howe and Pigot! Not the Fusileers and the King’s Own.”
He tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t because his head was too big and heavy. His head was as big as the whole world. His head was drifting away on a tide of darkness that swept by.