uld not but admire his courage. Nor was the conduct
of his officers less gallant. Throwing themselves from the saddle, they
formed into platoons and advanced against the enemy, but not even by this
desperate means could the regulars be got to charge. So many officers
fell that at last it was as difficult to find any to give orders as to
obey them, and when, as a last desperate resort, the general, putting his
pride in his pocket, yielded to Washington's advice, and directed that
the troops divide into small parties and advance behind the trees to
surround the enemy, there was none to execute the manoeuvre, which,
earlier in the action, would have saved the day.

It was plain that all was lost, that there was nothing left but to
retreat. We had no longer an army, but a mere mob of panic-stricken men.
The hideous yelling of the savages, as they saw the slaughter they were
doing and exulted in it, the rattle of the musketry, the groans and
curses of the wounded who fell everywhere about us, the screams of the
maddened horses, combined into a bedlam such as I hope never to hear
again. Toward the last, the Virginia troops alone preserved any semblance
of order. Away off to the right, I caught a glimpse of Peyronie rallying
the remnant of his company, and I looked from them to the trembling
regulars, and remembered with a rush of bitterness how they had laughed
at us a month before.

Of a sudden there was a dash of hoofs beside me, and I saw the general
rein up beneath a tree and look up and down the field. Colonel Washington
was at his side, and seemed to be unwounded, though he had been ever
where the fight was thickest.

"This is mere slaughter!" the general cried at last. "We can do no more.
Colonel Washington, order the retreat sounded."

And as the drums rolled out the dismal strain which meant disgrace for
him and the blighting of all his hopes, he sat his horse with rigid face
and eyes from which all life had fled. He had been taught the lesson of
the wilderness.

CHAPTER XVIII

DEFEAT BECOMES DISHONOR

But there was worse to follow, for scarce had the first tap of the drums
echoed among the trees, when the mob of regulars became a mere frenzied
rabble. The officers tried to withdraw them from the field in some
semblance of order, but the men seemed seized with mad, blind,
unreasoning terror, and were soon beyond all hope of control. They rushed
from the field, sweeping their officers before them, and