“They ain’t no better’n we were!” he protested. Then his eyes dropped to his frayed and stained remnants of breeches, untied at the knees; his hand fumbled at the growth of whiskers that made his face haggard and fearsome. Later, when I called him and one of his companions to go with me to get the quarter barrel of beer, they had scraped the bristles from their cheeks, tied their breeches, and their hair was combed and clubbed. They seemed to stand straighter, too, and to have less the look of being whipped.

The change in their appearance was a miracle, almost. I began to feel that war was not so bad; that it might be over before we knew it, so that Nathaniel and I could be starting back for Arundel before summer set in. It would be pleasant, I thought, to sit in the stuffed chair beside the table in our sitting-room in Arundel, wearing my blue coat, cameo pin and a ruffled shirt, and to speak modestly to callers about the great things we had done in Canada.

So nearly over did our troubles seem that I began to lay great plans for the future, as do all soldiers far from home. I’d build a new brig, I decided—a snow, perhaps: three hundred tons, with a master’s cabin the width of the stern, and a 24-pound traversing piece so we could fight off pirates on the China coast, and I’d carry Tom Bickford with me as first mate.…

Not even the change of wind that brought rain that night, together with clouds of mosquitoes and black flies and midges, could dampen our optimism.

I have no means to tell how terrible those stinging insects of Canada were. In moist weather, when the wind was right, they blanketed the low land all up and down the Richelieu as fog-particles blanket the sea. Their faint shrill wings made an unending singing around us. The midges stung like hot needles; mosquitoes lanced us perpetually; but worst of all were the black flies, which crawled beneath our hat bands or behind our ears, their bites unfelt but so villainous that blood ran down from the punctures they made. Then the bites swelled, and we saw men with eyes closed from the poison of those damnable insects, necks puffed up like squashes, ears standing out like diseased growths.

Thanks to the hoods of our smocks, and to lying in the smoke of a smudge, we came through the night without being eaten alive. The morning was only half over when a squad of men in blue and white came swinging down the river road. At their head was a young lieutenant who halted them smartly abreast of us; then came up to eye us doubtfully.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked.

I told him I was.

“Well, General Sullivan wants to know what’s being done with these ship timbers.”