withdrew and left the coast clear for me again. I then came out of my covert and went on; but what had become of my sick comrade, or the rest of my companions, I knew not. I still kept the sick man's musket; I was unwilling to leave it, for it was his own property, and I knew he valued it highly, and I had a great esteem for him. I had, indeed, enough to do to take care of my own concerns; it was exceeding hot weather, and I was faint, having slept but very little the preceding night, nor had I eaten a mouthful of victuals for more than twenty-four hours. I waddled on as well and as fast as I could, and soon came up with a number of men at a small brook, where they had stopped to drink and rest themselves a few moments. Just as I arrived, a man had lain down to drink at the brook, and as he did not rise very soon, one of the company observed, that he would kill himself with drinking; upon which, another, touching him without his appearing to notice it, said he had already killed himself, which was the case. Leaving them, I went on again, and directly came to a foul place in the road, where the soldiers had taken down the fence to pass into the fields. I passed across the corner of one field and through a gap in a cross fence into another; here I found a number of men resting under the trees and bushes in the fences. Almost the first I saw, after passing the gap in the fence, was my sick friend. I was exceeding glad to find him, for I had but little hope of ever seeing him again; he was sitting near the fence with his head between his knees. I tapped him upon the shoulder and asked him to get up and go on with me; no, said he, (at the same time regarding me with a most pitiful look,) I must die here. I endeavoured to argue the case with him, but all to no purpose,—he insisted upon dying there. I told him he should not die there nor any where else that day, if I could help it; and at length, with more persuasion and some force, I succeeded in getting him upon his feet again, and to moving on. There happened just at this instant a considerable shower of rain, which wet us all to the skin, being very thinly clad; we, however, continued to move forward, although but slowly. After proceeding about half a mile we came to a place where our people had begun to make a stand. A number, say two or three hundred, had collected here,
