Now,
if the Lord would lend them a hand, fighting cannot be sinful. I have
often been nonplused, though, to find that they used them chariots
instead of heavy dragoons, who are, in all comparison, better to break a
line of infantry, and who, for the matter of that, could turn such wheel
carriages, and getting into the rear, play the very devil with them,
horse and all."
"It is because you do not understand the construction of those ancient
vehicles, Sergeant Hollister, that you judge of them so erroneously,"
said the surgeon. "They were armed with sharp weapons that protruded
from their wheels, and which broke up the columns of foot, like
dismembered particles of matter. I doubt not, if similar instruments
were affixed to the cart of Mrs. Flanagan, that great confusion might be
carried into the ranks of the enemy thereby, this very day."
"It's but little that the mare would go, and the rig'lars firing at
her," grumbled Betty, from under her blanket. "When we got the plunder,
the time we drove them through the Jarseys it was, I had to back the
baste up to the dead; for the divil the foot would she move, fornent the
firing, wid her eyes open. Roanoke and Captain Jack are good enough for
the redcoats, letting alone myself and the mare."
A long roll of the drums, from the hill occupied by the British,
announced that they were on the alert; and a corresponding signal was
immediately heard from the Americans.
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