University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
THE MELEE — A CHARGE — FLIGHT — CAPTIVITY.

Prompt at the summons, Rutledge, then the dictator of South
Carolina, to whom the state had intrusted the sovereign discretion
implied in the words of his charter — to “see that the
republic sustained no harm” — followed the major of dragoons
to the post of danger with as little hesitation as the commonest
foot-soldier might have shown. Here, the soldier was in command,
and the sovereign was submissive. Both held themselves
in readiness, and their pistols too, at the head of the stairway;
while the troopers of Inglehardt were striving to force their
entrance from the hall into the passage.

“An axe! Bring an axe!” was the shriek, rather than
speech, of one of them, appparently in command below. Had
either of the two above-stairs ever heard the voice of Inglehardt's
fierce little red-headed lieutenant, Fry, he would have
been at no loss in identifying the speaker. Anon — was heard —

“Stand away! Let Crowell strike!”

And the blows resounded.

At this moment, Sinclair discovered Bertha at his elbow,
pale, but firm, and apparently taking position in the ranks, as
if in waiting for her share in the fray.

“Back!” cried he — “Back, dearest — you have no business
here! Back to your chamber and keep wholly out of sight!”

The poor girl shrank away, thinking the speech the harshest
she had ever heard, or expected to hear, from the lips of her
lover. But it was no time for mammets. The tilt promised to
be any sort but that of loving lips.

The blows resounded more and more heavily below; the
splinters were heard to fly from the door; and, after a few
more strokes, a rending crash, and a shout, announced the

success of the assailants. The door was shattered, driven from
its hinges, and the troopers dashed into the passage. They
darted forward — one, two, three! — headlong up the steps.

A shot! — the foremost is stricken down with a bullet through
the head! He fell backward, balanced a moment, as it were,
revolving in air, then yielded, and rolled over, down between
the legs of his companions!

There was a pause — a check — a sensation. Thus suddenly
to lose one man out of three or four is apt to cause uncomfortable
feelings in the survivors.

“What! do you stop when a man misses a step? on with
you! Don't you see he's only scared. Whoop! up, boys!
There's but a single man of them!”

So Fry!— and up the troopers bounded once more — two,
three, four; Fry pressing behind them with sword and pistol.

Up and down flew the bullets — a little wildly. Another
falls. Sinclair himself is grazed. He darts down with his
sabre; smites right and left, and hurls one fellow over the banister!
The space between the parties reduced, his powerful
size and strength, in that narrow passage, render him equal to
half a score. Besides, he is on the elevation. He strikes
downward, and this is an advantage. Fry, a brave little fellow,
confronts him, and his arm, the right arm, drops, hewn
clean off at the shoulder with a single sweep of the sabre.

“Oh, my God!” was his cry, “I'm ruined for life!” and
he sank down, fainting, at the feet of his enemy, and rolled to
the bottom of the steps.

But two men now confronted our major of dragoons — and
they shrank — staggered back — down the stairs, and jostled
each other, in the struggle, made with backward eyes, to regain
the door of the passage — regain their comrades.

Shouts within, and shouts without, confounded their senses.
Sinclair kept his ground, midway the stairflight. Rutledge had
reloaded the emptied pistols. He himself had discharged a
couple, and he now joined Sinclair with the ready weapons.
The latter would not suffer him to remain at the position which
he himself occupied.

“They are preparing for more deliberate operations,” said
he — “but deliberation is their death! Do you not hear the

bugles?” Suddenly there is a wild clamor without —a shout
— the merry and shrill clamor of the trumpets, and the heavy
clangor of the charging horse.

Sinclair rushed up for a moment, and gave a hurried glance,
through the half-opened window of one of the chambers, out
upon the avenue and court. He beheld the melée — a glance
was enough. He rushed down stairs, tore away the bar which
secured the outer door, and, waving his broadsword aloft, darted
out into the piazza, and down the steps — shouting, at the
topmost pitch of his voice, as he came forth: —

“Hurrah! dragoons! over 'em! They are yours! Feed
the sabre as they fly! Into them! Through 'em, my brave
fellows! You are a match for fifty more such rascals!”

And well did the brave troopers second the encouragement
of the major of dragoons, and deserve it! The squad of Inglehardt,
taken wholly by surprise, was already scattered. Some
darted into the woods below, others for the swamp. Their captain
nowhere to be seen — their fierce little Ensign Fry, bleeding
helplessly to death at the foot of the stairs in the dwelling
— they were without a head, and the members were soon dispersed
and broken; all but a group of ten or a dozen, who kept
together, and dashed into the upper avenue, relying on their
hoofs rather than their broadswords.

But the dragoons were soon upon their haunches. Sinclair
himself was now mounted, having seized upon a vacant saddle
— a steed that, in his fright and confusion — had actually thrust
his nose into one of the basement windows of the house.

The poor beast — not a bad beast either — was that of Fry.
Once astride this animal, the spurs of Sinclair soon brought him
to the right-about; and he dashed forward with all his mettle,
now quite recovered, in pursuit of his flying associates. These,
hard pressed, wheeled about, and emptying their pistols full in
the face of their pursuers, but without doing much mischief,
they prepared for the encounter, pell-mell, with the slashing
broadsword. Presenting a good force, they completely covered
the narrow avenue in which they were overtaken.

“Charge!” cried Sinclair, with all the glad fury of the Hun,
raging with battle. But, even in that moment, a voice as loud,
and clearer than his own, thundered out, at his very side: —

“Spare them, Sinclair! Remember, they are our countrymen!
Let them accept mercy — let them make submission!
We will receive them into our ranks! Submit, brave fellows,
it is better to live for your country, than to die for a foreign
tyrant! Submit and save yourselves!”

It was the voice of Rutledge. He, too, had seized upon a
vagrant steed, and was now riding by Sinclair's side — an
emptied pistol in his hand, no hat upon his head, his arm waving
wide, as was its wont when he thundered in speech — and
his lofty person rising to the full majesty of the words which
he had spoken.

And the words were as magical as majestic. The loyalists
lowered their swords, and made the sign of submission, wheeled
into the rear of Sinclair's troop, and became good rebels after
a creditable fashion.

However strange the fact, the case was frequent. The wise
policy of Rutledge brought back hundreds to the ranks of the
country. He knew that the cause had not been well understood
at first — that many were beguiled by false counsellors —
than many had been driven by injustice into the ranks of the
enemy, and that it needed only to take all such, at the happy
moment, to persuade, convince, or — subsidize. The victory
was won. All but seven or eight of Inglehardt's followers
were to be counted upon the ground, or in captivity. The fugitives,
dashing into the woods below, which it had been arranged
that Coulter's troop was to cover, had thus far succeeded
in making their escape. These were to be looked after at a
future moment.

Sinclair and Rutledge, with the troopers, now rode back to
the dwelling, where some time was spent necessarily in the inspection
of the field, in removing the dead from the house, and
purging it of its bloody testimonials. Here, it was found that
the fierce little Lieutenant Fry, had bled to death; not an unfrequent
event where such formidable wounds were given, and
in a service which, like that of our partisans, was attended by
but few surgeons. Fry was utterly lifeless when his body was
examined, but it was still warm. Two others were found slain
by pistol-shots — three lay severely wounded in the court, and
one killed; seven were slightly wounded, and within the

succor of the simplest surgery, and only some half-dozen of
the tory troop remained to be picked up or accounted for.

But where was their captain — where Inglehardt, who had
been so securely corded, as it was thought, and muffled up in
the passage of the basement? When they came to look for
him, he was gone. He had evidently found assistance from
other hands than his own, and had escaped. He was nowhere
to be found. When, a little while after, the ladies were referred
to, they knew nothing. They had heard noises below, but
had not ventured from the upper chambers, till Sinclair's reappearance
in the court below had reassured them; and even
then they had not descended to the lower story.

But we have sources of information beyond theirs, by which
to account for the escape of the captain of loyalists. He had a
friend capable of succoring him, in one, who, though his creature,
was about the last creature in the world to whom he
should have looked for help in a moment of danger. But the
mouse can gnaw through the meshes of the lion, and Inglehardt's
mouser came to his aid at a happy moment.

It happened that, in the very moment when the conflict began,
Julius, the mulatto house-servant of Travis, trembling with
terror, had crept into one of the basement windows. Here, in
one of the darkest places, he crouched in an ague fit, and
remained unconscious of everything but the shouts, the shots,
the clang of sabres, and the rush of steeds without, until the
pursuit of the fugitives by our major of dragoons. Then, he
recovered courage to look about him, but not yet to look out.
He heard a difficult breathing in the passage — a rustling, restless
motion — and a feeble voice, half-stifled, crying, at moments,
for succor. It was some time before the mulatto dared approach
the object of his apprehension, and ascertain the fact, that the
prisoner, thus fettered, and half-smothered in the coverlet torn
from the bed of his mistress, and wrapped tolerably snugly
about his neck, and over his head, was the wily tory whom he
had so profitlessly served in this very expedition. With trembling
hands the mulatto cut the cords, tore off the bandage,
and released the prisoner.

A glance at the field, taken stealthily through the windows,
revealed to Inglehardt the whole plan of escape. The troopers

were in pursuit. The negroes had all fled to hiding-places.
None but wounded, dying, or dead men were to be seen, and
it was just possible to steal out, unnoticed, to the swamp.
Thither, accordingly, he determined to fly; and he made the
attempt in safety, taking Julius with him. He buried himself,
as soon as possible, up to the neck, among the thick reeds and
willows of the swamp.

Here, he could still, in some measure, be a witness of the
scene. He could hear the shouts of victory, the tramplings of
the horse, the blasts of the bugle, and then the regular trot of
the troop as it passed into the woods below; and, finally, to his
great relief, down came the darkening shadows of night over
river and forest. Under her friendly shelter, Inglehardt stole
out from his hiding-place, making for the river, and designing
to swim across. But here he found the boat which Sinclair had
employed in his passage to and fro. He gladly availed himself
of the opportunity which it offered him, and, having made the
boy Julius first enter, he leaped in himself, and allowed the
little vessel to drop down stream. The navigation was not
intricate, and he knew it well; and when he reached the mouth
of Four-mile Branch, he ran the dug-out in, pressed upward as
far as the waters would allow, and then put his little vessel in a
place of concealment near the banks, closely covered with a
matted thicket.

Here he felt himself tolerably safe. It was now quite dark,
though the night was clear and starlighted. He was now, he
knew, within half a mile of the bay thicket, whither he had ordered
Travis to be taken, and where he was to be kept, until he
should return from his enterprise against Sinclair at Holly-Dale.
He never anticipated his own return in his present condition;
but, with usual and proper precaution, the same bay had been
appointed as the place of rendezvous for his troopers in case
they should be scattered in pursuit or flight. He could soon
reach this point, and everything was silent. That he did not
immediately attempt it was due to his exhaustion. He was
sore from his recent bonds, and wearied, not to speak of a temporary
depression of spirits that was quite natural to his reverses.
Once he thought of sounding his bugle, which was still
about his neck, but he prudently recollected that its summons

might bring down upon him far other visiters than those whom
he cared to entertain at present. He concluded to keep snugly
in his canoe for an hour, and then venture out to the place of
rendezvous. His present place of refuge was favorable to any
movement which he might desire to make, enabling him to
steal back again to Holly-Dale, should he see fit — and this was
to depend wholly upon the number of fugitives which should
join him at the bay — to return to Orangeburg, should the conquering
troop of Sinclair not take the same direction; to put
himself across the river, or go still farther down the stream,
should the exigency of the case render it necessary that he
should increase the distance between himself and his enemy.
Inglehardt could meditate his plans coolly still, in spite of his
mortifications of flesh and spirit — in spite of the defeat of his
objects, and the loss, now felt for the first time, of his pistols,
sword and snuff-box. His nose — and it felt the privation —
was unfed during the whole of his meditation.

Leaving him to brood above his paddles, and in waiting upon
Fate, we return to Holly-Dale.

While Inglehardt had thus been stealing off in security, Sinclair
had been busily engaged in reaping the field which he
had won, and arranging his plan of future operations. Much
had to be done, occupying considerable time, before he could rejoin
the ladies. Rutledge required him in consultation, and
there was something to be understood in regard to the troop
with which the victory had been obtained, which taxed his consideration.
This troop was not that of Coulter; was, in fact,
only a detachment from that of Captain St. Julien, under the
command of Lieutenant Mazyck. St. Julien had been compelled
to go, with one half of his force, in pursuit of a mixed
body of tories and black dragoons (negroes), which had been
reported as breaking cover somewhere on the South Edisto;
and thither had Coulter also gone with his company, before the
summons of Sinclair could reach him. Mazyck, accordingly,
had brought with him but twenty-five troopers; but, when we
add to these, some thirteen of Inglehardt's squad — raw fellows,
but docile, who had accepted Rutledge's offer of pardon for
past offences — the thirty-eight, all told, made a body sufficiently
strong for present purposes.

Jim Ballou had also come back, from his fruitless search after
Coulter, and 'Bram, the negro, had reached the field in season
to dash in, after his master, and make his demonstrations in the
fight, when it promised to be fiercest. Under Sinclair's eye,
and seconding his charge, 'Bram had already shown that he
could be a fearful customer. He had some scruples about the
prudence and propriety of warfare, unless some dashing cavalier
of the white race put himself in the van of battle.

Having seen to his troopers, and ascertained the facts in his
situation, Sinclair prepared, accompanied by Rutledge, to revisit
the ladies, and relieve their anxieties. They re-entered
the house together, and while the dictator remained in the parlor
below, our major of dragoons ascended the stairs. He was
met midway by Bertha, whom he caught with a loving fierceness
in his arms, pressing her lips with his own, before she
could apprehend his purpose, and extricate herself from his
grasp.

“All's safe, Bertha. We are the masters of the field.”

“Is all safe?” answered the girl, with anxiety and trembling
—“Is all safe, Willie? Where's Henry, my brother?”

“Henry, your brother!” exclaimed Sinclair, staggered by
the question, and at once reproaching himself for his seeming
forgetfulness of the noble boy.

“Is he not here? Has he not been with you?”

“No! no! Good Heavens, Willie, what is become of him?
Have you not seen him?”

Yes, to be sure; I saw him when I rode out to charge the
enemy up the avenue. I saw him, then, and heard him shouting,
and thought he followed me, but, in the excitement of the
charge, I lost him; and on my return, seeing no more of him,
I concluded he had joined his mother and yourself.”

“Oh, Willie! this is terrible! What can have become of
him? Go, dear Willie, go seek and find him, and come back
soon with him, for mother is in a wretched state of uneasiness.
Hasten, Willie, while I go back and quiet her, with a hope
that you will find and bring him soon.”

Sinclair at once dashed down the stairs, and, in a few words,
told Rutledge his new cause of anxiety, in which the sympathies
of the latter were deeply interested.

“But I must go, Sinclair, you are aware — go at once; I am
expected, and hope to meet General Greene to-night. Too
much depends upon mere moments now, to suffer me to delay,
even though to help in the search for this gallant boy.”

“I know it, sir; and, if you please, will despatch an escort
of ten men with you, under Lieutenant Mazyck, who will accompany
you across the river, crossing at Shilling's, which is
the shortest rout to Herrisperger's, and going on with you to the
meeting with General Greene, if you require it.”

“No! no! that will not be necessary. I have my two aids
waiting for me at Herrisperger's and they will suffice for escort.
The road is pretty clear now. We know where Rawdon is on
the Congaree, and that Greene's detachment is even now in
advance of him. All's safe along my route, and I will send
your man back as soon as I reach Herrisperger's. You, meanwhile,
see after the boy, and join the army with all despatch.
We have active work for all our cavalry below.”

“Touching Captain Travis, governor, and his petition?”

“It is granted. Here is the document which gives him indemnity.
His papers are valuable to us, and I do not question
his fidelity in future. His danger is now from the enemy. His
absence suggests the fear that Inglehardt has found him out, and
secured him in Orangeburg. Now is the time to dash into the
village, empty the jail, where they are said to have some score
or two of refractory Irish in limbo, and where Travis is probably
laid by the heels also. Be sure, while you are about this
business, to secure what remains of the commissariat in Orangeburg.
Get all the clothes and munitions that you can; and, by
loading your troopers well, and moving promptly up the river,
you will be able to join us, before Rawdon can possibly make
his way across the country. You will probably find the Irish,
whom you emancipate, willing to take arms against their former
owners. If so, mount them, and bring them along behind your
troopers. Of course, you will search for the boy; but beware
that you do not linger one hour too long. You must give up
the search, if it delays you over the next twenty-four hours.
However painful it may be to you, in your relations with this
very interesting family, to forego the search, you are neither to
peril your troop, nor embarrass our purposes in any fruitless

waste of time. If the boy is slain, which God forbid! you will
find his body, no doubt, in yonder wood. If the fugitives have
borne him along with them, they will hardly ill-treat such a
child — indeed, will hardly think it worth while to detain him.”

“Ah! sir, you know not this cold-blooded scoundrel Inglehardt,
or his objects. The father and son in his power, he will
hope to establish a fearful hold upon the family.”

“But he is a fugitive, also.”

“He has escaped, and flies, it is true; but he has probably
caught the boy in his flight; and, while we were pressing upon
the enemy up the avenue, has succeeded in carrying him off.
The father's wealth, the daughter's beauty, are both objects of
greedy desire with Inglehardt; and father and son in his
power, how terrible is the hold which he possesses upon the
mother and daughter!”

Sinclair readily conceived the policy of his enemy, from a
knowledge of his character.

“It is a cruel prospect to survey, but, I trust, that you exaggerate
its dangers. As a fugitive, and pressed by your troopers,
Inglehardt's flight must be one of embarrassments, which
will probably compel him to cast off his prisoners, assuming
that he has them.”

“He may brain them first,” said Sinclair, with a shudder.

“Hardly, if his purpose be such as you indicate. No! no!
my dear fellow, look at the thing more cheerfully. Press the
pursuit; urge the hunt and search; be prompt and keen; be
quick; do not lose time; and, if you fail to find the boy and
his father, at least, your failure will be temporary. My life
upon it, Inglehardt will harm neither. His policy demands that
he should not.”

“But should he give Travis up to Balfour or Rawdon, they
will hang him.”

“He will hardly do that either, unless he finds his schemes
have been defeated. No! no! shake off your gloom, and go
to your duty. Send out your scouts at once, and scour all the
woods down to Orangeburg. Let us both away on our separate
duties at once. Let me have your escort. The night is upon
us.”

And the two parted, going several ways; Rutledge, with

Mazyck and his escort upward, and Sinclair with all but two
troopers, left to watch Holly-Dale, burying himself in the lower
woods, where, under direction of Ballou, the scout, some of the
men carrying torches, the whole command was so scattered as
to cover the width of the wood from the edge of the swamp to the
main road. Thus displayed, the troopers pushed down in equal
line, with regular pressure, and as rapidly as they might consistently
with their purpose of close search along the route.
The lower swamp itself could not be penetrated on horseback,
or searched successfully by night, and Sinclair shook his head
sadly as he thought that the poor boy might, even then, be held
down, and half stifled, not a hundred yards distant, in some
one of its deep recesses.