The men quickly abandoned Dick and Fritz, and grasping their guns, ran crouching to the nearest stone wall in front of them.
"It's the British!" cried one of the pickets.
"Come on, men, and we'll give a good account of ourselves," shouted the captain. "Keep behind the walls and they can't touch us."
He and the other leaders rushed across the field toward the oncoming British. The latter swept around the bend in the road in regular formation and fired a volley with telling effect at the Patriot band. The leaders, more impetuous than the men, suffered severely, and all of them dropped either dead or wounded. The men, however, kept on and without further loss gained the shelter of the stone wall. But without their leaders the defence gradually weakened and the men began to drop back and take refuge behind the second wall. The boys had been onlookers up to this point, but the defeat of the Patriots was too much for their enthusiasm and with the ropes still hanging, unheeded about their necks and trailing out behind, the two youths leaped to the front and snatching up guns from the dead soldiers, shouted to the demoralized and scattering members of the band.
"Come on, men!" Dick cried. "Don't let them get the best of us now! A few more volleys and we'll have them on the run."
"Yah, yah, yah!" chorused Fritz, following Dick and brandishing the musket above his head. He and Dick reached the second stone wall behind which the men were seeking shelter.
The English troopers were holding the first wall and were contemplating a charge across the field to drive the Patriots from their position when Dick took charge.
"Fritz!" he cried, above the roar of the battle. "Take a dozen of these fellows around and through the woods and take the British on the flank!"
"Dot's it!" answered Fritz, catching his friend's idea quickly. "We'll did it."
Dick motioned a handful of the men apart and told them to follow Fritz if they hoped to win out that day and save their liberty. Dick Dare's commanding tone and natural leadership inspired the men with new life, and the few men left with him redoubled their efforts to cover the departure of their comrades and hold the Redcoats off. Their firing, however, was growing more and more infrequent, and the English troops were beginning to climb over the stone wall to charge across the field when Fritz and his men broke out of the woods and yelling like a hundred Indians charged upon the rear of the British.