278 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

movement upon his rear, until startled by the signal_guns with which the earl announced his approach to Grant. Then, as the truth burst upon him, he found that his retreat towards the lines at Brooklyn was intercepted, and that he was fairly trapped between two superior forces of the enemy. At the same time came tidings of the defeat of Sullivan upon his left. Grant, largely re-enforeed,1 was now in full motion, and pressing fiercely on his front. Colonel Atlee and his corps were made prisoners, after a series of spirited and desperate skirmishes; General Parsons' command, on the extreme left, had mostly been taken prisoners;2 and Stirling, finding that he was fast being surrounded, saw that his only chance of escape was to drive Cornwallis, who then was occupying the “Cortelyou house” as a redoubt, up the Port Road towards Flatbush, and by getting between him and Fort Box, on the opposite side of the creek, to escape, under cover of its guns, across Brower’s mill-dam.3 He knew that his attack upon the earl would, at all events, give time for escape to his countrymen, whom he saw struggling through the salt morasses and across the narrow causeway of Freeke’s mill-pond.

1 This re-enforcement consisted of 2,000 men, who landed in boats, in Bennet’s Cove, between ten and eleven o'clock A.M. See Colonel Smallwood’s letter, Onderdonk, sec. 811, also sec. 810 and 813, and Bancroft, ix. 92, who says that Admiral Howe, “having learned that Grant's division, which halted at the edge of the woods, was in want of ammunition, went himself with a supply from his ship, sending his boat‘s crew with it on their backs up the hill, while further supplies followed from the storeships.”

During this re-enforeement Lieut. Wragg and twenty of the British marines, mistaking Colonel Hazlet’s Delaware regiment, who had just been ordered up from the left to the front (ante, p. 272, note), received several fires from them without returning them, and, on advancing towards them to correct their supposed error, were captured and marched to the rear under the charge of Lieut. Popham, whose amusing account of the affair will be found in Ouderdonk, sec. 818. Original MSS. in library of L.I. Historical Society. See also Onderdonk, sec. 806, 819; also, post, p. 281 of this work.

2 Parsons, it seems, had “left his men in quest of orders, was intercepted, concealed himself in a swamp, and came into camp the next morning by way of the East River.” Bancroft, ix. 92; Penn. Journal, Sept. 11, ’76.

3 “The lines between Box Fort and the creek were not completed the day before. There was an opening adjoining the creek which it was thought the enemy were acquainted with; for when they came to it, and found the entrance closed with a breastwork and other defences, they appeared confounded.”—Account in Independent (Boston) Chronicle, September 19, ’76. Also, see Life of Stephen Olney of Rhode Island, p. 175: “All that seemed to prevent the enemy from taking our main fort was a scarecrow row of palisades, from the fort to low-water in the cove, which Major Box had set up that morning.”