Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/269

 him, and, shouting Indians, he and his men fired their guns simultaneously with the enemy lying in covert.

The whole hammock in a moment was alive with Indians, yelling and firing rapidly. The little party of soldiers was surrounded, and the captain shouted, "men clear the hammock, take the trees and give them a fair fight." No sooner commanded than executed. The sergeant came to his officer with blood running from his mouth and nose, and said, "Captain, I am killed." Too true; it was his last remark. He was a brave man, but his captain could do nothing then but tell him to get behind a tree near by.

As the hammock was occupied by the foe and the military behind the trees at the end furthest from the post, the order was given to charge, and the men rushed into the thicket, driving the enemy right and left flying before the bayonet and getting behind trees outside the hammock, the troops passing through their centre. From the nature of the place on arriving at the other end of the thicket, the soldiers were much scattered, and the firing still going on, no little exertion was required for the captain to rally his men, and while thus engaged he was badly wounded, shot through the body, but continued his efforts until successful and the enemy driven from the ground. The captain was carried to the fort in the arms of his men.

We have thus numbered them, as all others before made were abortions. We remember the doggerel of the battle of the kegs of the revolution, and a more subsequent attempt to blow up British shipping blockading our ports in the war of 1812, which premature explosions rendered ineffective, and even Lord-Admiral Lyon's flag-ship, at Cronstadt, which had her stern nearly blown out of water by a torpedo, set by the Russians during the Crimean war, was found in the dry-dock at Liverpool not to have had a plank started. Our story of the first torpedo ended in the fighting of sixteen soldiers and an officer with some one hundred or more Indians, and among the casualties the wounding of the officer and his being carried to Fort King in the arms of his men. Another and second torpedo had been previously placed at the post by him, and soon after the fight a thousand or more troops were collected there, and it became such an object of dread to the whole army that a soldier guard was put over it until Captain Rains was able to go and take it in. "Suppose," said one officer to another, high