"Dear Lord, help us to beat the British this day, and give me a chance to empty my powder-horn before night. Thou hast been with General Washington and me ever since last year. Please don't desert us now."
Nor was he surprised when, as if in direct answer to his petition, he rose to see the chief riding through the troop lines, but such a chief as he had never known before. The kindly face was aflame with anger, and streaked with dust and sweat. The powerful horse he rode was lathered, and its heaving flanks were scarred from hard-driven spurs.
As the commander passed the regiment, his staff in a whirlwind at his heels, Jabez heard him shout in a great voice vibrant with rage and grief:
"I cannot believe the army is retreating. I ordered a general advance. Who dared to give such an order? Advance those lines—"
"It was General Lee's order to retreat," Jabez heard an officer stammer in reply.
Washington vanished in a moment, with a storm of cheers in his wake. Jabez was content to wait for orders now. He believed the Battle of Monmouth as good as won.
His recollection of the next few hours was jumbled and hazy. He knew that the regiment went forward, and then the white smoke of musket-fire closed down before him. Now and then the summer breeze made rifts in this stifling cloud, and he saw it streaked with spouting fire. He aimed his old musket at that other foggy line beyond the rail fence, whose top was lined with men in coats of red and green and black.
Suddenly his officers began running to and fro, and a shout ran down the thin line:
"Stand steady, Connecticut! Save your fire! Aim low! Here comes a charge!"
A tidal wave of red and brass broke through the gaps in the rail fence, and the sunlight rippled along a wavering line of British bayonets. They crept nearer, nearer, until Jabez could see the grim ferocity, the bared teeth, the staring eyes of the dreaded Grenadiers.