Feeling themselves too weak to repel an attack by such overwhelming odds, they retired, and the town was given up to pillage." "Didn't they do any fighting at all, papa ?" asked Lulu in a tone of regret and mortification.

"I know Americans often did fight when their numbers were very much smaller than those of the enemy." "That is quite true," he said, with a gleam of patriotic pride in his eye, "and sometimes won the victory in spite of the odds against them.
That thing had happened only a few days previously at Craney Island, and the British were doubtless smarting under a sense of humiliating defeat when they proceeded to the attack of Hampton." "How many of the British were there, Captain ?" asked Evelyn Leland.
"I have forgotten, though I know they far outnumbered the Americans." "Yes," he replied, "as I have said there were about four hundred and fifty of the Americans, while Beckwith had twenty-five hundred men and was assisted by the flotilla of Admiral Cockburn, consisting of armed boats and barges, which appeared suddenly off Blackbeard's Point at the mouth of Hampton Creek, at the same time that Beckwith's troops moved stealthily forward through the woods under cover of the _Mohawk's_ guns.
"To draw the attention of the Americans from the land force coming against them was Cockburn's object, in which he was partly successful, his flotilla being seen first by the American patrols at Mill Creek.
"They gave the alarm, arousing the camp, and a line of battle was formed.

But just then some one came in haste to tell them of the large land force coming against the town from the rear, and presently in the woods and grain fields could be seen the scarlet uniforms of the British and the green ones of the French." "Oh, how frightened the people in the town must have been!" exclaimed Grace.

"I should think they'd all have run away." "Most of them did," replied her father; "but some sick and feeble ones had to stay behind--others also in whose care they were--and trust to the supposed humanity of the British; a vain reliance it proved, at least so far as Admiral Cockburn was concerned.

He gave up the town to pillage and rapine, allowing the doing of such deeds as have consigned his name to well-merited infamy.
"But to return to my story: Major Crutchfield, the American commander, resolved that he and his four hundred and fifty men would do what they could to defend the town.