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Greene's assumption of command was distinguished by a happy augury. In a few hours after reaching camp Charlotte, he received intelligence of the success of Lt.-Col. Washington, against the British post held at Clermont, South Carolina, by the British Colonel Rugely. Rugely was well posted in a redoubt, which was tenable except against artillery. Washington's force consisted only of cavalry.
Having made an imposing show of part of his men and having placed the trunk of a pine tree in such a situation as, at a distance, to have the appearance of a cannon, he summoned the post to surrender, and it yielded without firing a shot. The Tory Colonel Rugely and 112 men whom he had collected in the place were made prisoners.
The affair looked sufficiently serious, and Rugely, to avoid any unnecessary effusion of blood, yielded the post. Cornwallis, drily commenting on the transaction, in a letter to Tarleton, remarks, "Rugely will not be made a brigadier." Greene proceeded in the duties of his command with characteristic vigilance and vigor.
What of him?" "Why, people believed in him, you know, and thought him a jolly good fellow, up to the time when they discovered that he had poisoned a few of his friends in a quiet gentlemanly way." Mr. Hawkehurst smiled at the irrelevance of this remark. He could not perceive the connection of ideas between Palmer the Rugely poisoner, and Philip Sheldon the stockbroker.
He will make that poor girl believe him the most disinterested of mankind." "You can warn her." "Yes; as I have warned you. To what purpose? You are inclined to believe in Phil rather than to believe in me, and you will be so inclined to the end of the chapter. You remember that man Palmer, at Rugely, who used to go to church, and take the sacrament?" "Yes; of course I remember that case.
Force being of no avail, he resorted to the following stratagem. Having painted the trunk of a pine, and mounted it on a carriage so as to resemble a field piece, he paraded it in front of the enemy, and demanded a surrender. The whole party, consisting of one hundred and twelve men, with Colonel Rugely at their head, alarmed at the prospect of a cannonade, surrendered themselves prisoners of war.
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