When the men were well awake, General Marion sent a lieutenant ahead, directing him as follows:
“Take a few men with you, make a wide circle, and come in behind the house. Get as close to them as you can, and wait till I give the signal. Then close in on them and see that no one gets away. We must make quick work of this. See that your guns are all right.”
To the men waiting with him he said: “Are you ready?”
“Ready, sir,” they whispered back.
“Come on, then,” he commanded. “Follow me. Don’t make any noise. Don’t speak. Watch me. Don’t fire till I say the word.”
They crept around the Blue House like Indians, testing every twig lest it snap, and feeling their way in the darkness. Suddenly a shot rang out in the early morning air. A sentinel on the other side of the house must have seen the lieutenant’s men. The British soldiers, roused from a sound sleep, jumped about, peering this way and that in the darkness. No one knew what had happened, or what would happen next.
The officers came tumbling out, swearing and yelling. As the Americans came rushing in from all sides, shouting and shooting, the British thought they were attacked by an army instead of by thirty guerrillas. Marion’s men grabbed the rifles of the British soldiers, shooting some and knocking others down. Some of the British shouted, “Quarter!” and General Marion ordered his men to stop firing.
There was a wholesale surrender, and the hundreds of American prisoners were set free. Many of them joined Marion’s men. When the British saw how they and their prisoners had been taken in, ten to one, they looked sheepish.
But the British leader, the bullying Colonel Tarleton, had made his escape. His motto seemed to be—
“He who fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day.”