“Look here, Sergeant, you can see the tracks where another one of these scum went in the water.” The sergeant ordered two of his men to go as far as possible to the right and left, and to move out into the water far enough to see clearly behind the big tree. When they reported no one on the small island, the sergeant said, “Well, he’s either drowned or we don’t need to worry about a coward like him, willing to leave this other fellow in order to save his own hide. There’s no need to swim around searching for him. We’re wet enough already. Let’s spread out and maybe we’ll find some more of the bastards hiding between here and the camp.”

The patrol group moved back toward the other troops, and there was no remaining sound except the gurgling of the slow-moving stream.

Ethan hid on the hummock for almost four hours, waiting until the last British troops had moved downstream toward the Savannah River and a triumphant return to their base. Then he waded back to the higher ground, noticing that the water level had dropped almost six inches. His first task was to carry Kindred’s ravaged body to a place well above the flooded ground and to bury him. He dug the grave with a broken bayonet, laboriously chopping through the nest of roots and removing the sodden earth with his hands. Throughout more than an hour of labor, he mumbled something of a prayer, mixing words of anger, sorrow, and mostly guilt. He could not forget the words of the British sergeant as they gave up their hunt for him. Then he searched the devastated and abandoned campsite where he had attempted to warn General Ashe and tried to ignore the dozens of bodies of Continental troops that were lying where they had fallen. He had a brief feeling of obligation to cover them in some way, but realized immediately that this would be an impossible task. He did, however, make sure that none of them was still alive, and felt a strange and somewhat embarrassing sense of relief that the British had been so thorough in their efforts to decapitate or disembowel their fallen or captured foes.

He found some hard, dry biscuits under a collapsed tent, its sides ripped by sword or bayonet thrusts, but despite his hunger he couldn’t eat there among the dead. He wrapped a supply in a piece of canvas and began his long walk home, which would be more than twenty miles. After he was well clear of the battle area, he sat down by a small stream and ate exactly half of his food.