and on the following morning General Stansbury left Baltimore
for Washington with thirteen hundred of his corps. Another
force, under Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Sterett, consisting of
the Fifth Regiment of Baltimore Volunteers, Major Pinkney's
rifle battalion, and the artillery companies of Captains Myers
and Magruder, left Baltimore on the evening of the 20th, and
joined Stansbury on the evening of the 23d.

"With wise precaution, General Smith ordered the Eleventh
brigade and Colonel Moore's cavalry to hold themselves in
readiness to march to Baltimore at a moment's warning, for it
seemed probable that the enemy would strike at both cities
simultaneously.

"The British in the meantime had moved up the Patuxent from
Benedict, the land troops being accompanied by a flotilla of
launches and barges that kept abreast of them. The naval forces
were under the command of the notorious marauder, Cockburn.
They reached Lower Marlborough on the 21st, when Barney's
flotilla, then in charge of Lieutenant Frazier and a sufficient
number of men to destroy it if necessary, moved up to Pig
Point, where some of the vessels grounded in the shallow water.

"For the defense of Washington the whole force was about seven
thousand strong, of whom nine hundred were enlisted men. The
cavalry did not exceed four hundred in number. The little army
had twenty-six pieces of cannon, of which twenty were only
six-pounders. This force, if concentrated, would have been
competent to roll back the invasion had the commanding officer
been untrammeled by the interference of the President and his
Cabinet."

All that was written when the facts of the case were well known, and
now the story shall be taken up as I wrote it when a boy.

* * * * *

It was not all plain sailing from Nottingham to Pig Point, for the
water was shallow, and there were many places where it was necessary
to handle even a pungy very tenderly in order to avoid taking the
ground.

While Darius was not well acquainted with the stream, he had a
sailorly eye for bad places, and never made the mistake of trying to
jump the little vessel where she was likely to be held hard and fast.

Many times were we forced to take to the canoe in order to pull the
Avenger's nose around more sharply than could be done by the hel