man, beneath its fearful breath ere the other
half were in the midst of the enemy's ranks. Those were days when a
certain simplicity of character made the soldier believe that bayonets
and sabres were terrible weapons and meant to do terrible work. No
rewards were then offered for "a dead cavalryman" or for "a bloody
bayonet." There were cloven skulls at Eutaw as at Crecy, and men were
transfixed by each other's deadly bayonet-thrusts. As Washington,
maddened by the loss of his brave troopers, swung his sharp blade like
the flail of death, a shot from the musket of a tall grenadier pierced
the lung of his noble bay, and as the falling steed rolled over on her
gallant rider the man shortened his musket and buried the sharp steel
in the colonel's body. A second thrust would have followed with deadly
result had not the British major, Majoribanks, seized the arm of the
soldier and demanded the surrender of his fallen and bleeding foe. The
tide of battle had receded like some huge swell of ocean, and as the
wounded hero struggled to his feet he found himself surrounded by
enemies, to contend with whom would have been folly. Turning his
feeble glance for a second toward the retreating remnant of his
shattered command, he caught a glimpse through the smoke and dust of
his little battle-flag fluttering in the distance, and fast receding
toward the point whence Hampton's bugles were already sounding the
rally. Neither William Washington nor his "Eutaw Flag" was ever again
in battle for the country, for the captivity of the former terminated
only with the war, and the latter fades from history from that
date until, in 1827, Jane Washington, for seventeen years a widow,
presented it as a precious inheritance to the gallant corps of
Charleston citizen soldiery, who still guard its folds from dishonor,
as they do the name of the knightly paladin which they bear. The
wedding was celebrated soon after the establishment of peace. Major
Majoribanks escaped the carnage of the day, but he lived not to
deliver his distinguished prisoner at Charleston. Sickening on the
retreat with the deadly malaria of the Carolina swamps, he died near
Black Oak, and his mossy grave may be seen to-day by the roadside,
marked by a simple stone and protected from desecration by a wooden
paling. It stands near the gate of Woodboo plantation, which old
Stephen Mazyck, the Huguenot, first settled, about twenty-five miles
from Eutaw and forty-three from Charlesto