This little narrative will give some idea of the straits to which the good whig matrons of Carolina were sometimes reduced in those days. But no time was allowed Horry to extort the provisions as suggested. He had scarcely got to the piazza when his videttes gave the alarm. Two shots warned him of the approach of the foe, and forgetting that his cap, saber and pistols lay on the long bench on the piazza, Horry mounted his horse, left the inclosure, and rushed into the _melée_. The British were seventeen in number, well mounted and commanded by a brave fellow named Merritt. The dragoons, taken by surprise, turned in flight, and, smiting at every step, the partisans pursued them with fatal earnestness. But two men are reported to have escaped death or captivity, and they were their Captain and a Sergeant. It was in approaching to encounter Merritt that Horry discovered that he was weaponless. "My officers," says he, "in succession, came up with Captain Merritt, who was in the rear of his party, urging them forward. They engaged him. He was a brave fellow. Baxter, with pistols, fired at his breast, and missing him, retired; Postelle and Greene, with swords, engaged him; both were beaten off. Greene nearly lost his head. His buckskin breeches were cut through several inches. I almost blush to say that this one British officer beat off three Americans." The honor of the day was decidedly with Merritt, though he was beaten. He was no doubt a far better swordsman than our self-taught cavalry, with broadswords wrought out of mill-saws. Merritt abandoned his horse, and escaped to a neighboring swamp, from whence, at midnight, he got into Georgetown. Colonel Horry, after the war, met Captain Merritt in New York, when the latter recognized him, and in the interview which followed, confessed, that although so desperate in his self-defense he was never more frightened in his life. "Believe me, sir," said he, "when I assure you that I went out that morning with my locks as bright an auburn as ever curled upon the forehead of youth, but by the time I had crawled out of the swamp into Georgetown that night, they were as gray as a badger!" If this is true, he must indeed have been wofully frightened, for the records of such an effect of terror are few and far between. One of Byron's heroes says that "His locks grew white, In a single night." But that was with grief, and not with fear. Horry's award of praise to the British Captain for his courage in beating off three of his own men, was both generous and ingenious, when it is considered that the Englishman was a scientific swordsman, possessing a superior weapon, while his antagonists were self-taught, and their swords, if not beaten out of "plowshares," were veritably made out of mill-saws.