“They’re being dismantled on orders. Orders of General Arnold.”

“Well, General Sullivan’s in command here. He wants it stopped.”

“I take my orders from General Arnold,” I told him.

“You’ll have to talk to General Sullivan,” the lieutenant said.

Seeing there was nothing to do but go, I told Tom Bickford to stay where he was, come hell or high water. Then I went splashing back with the lieutenant and his squad of men.

… Headquarters, in the square stone building of a mill owner, was in a turmoil, smelling of steamy wet clothes, and seething with people waiting to see General Sullivan. Officers blundered through the rooms as if half out of their wits, all of them mud-spattered and swollen with insect bites.

For five hours I stood on one foot and then on the other in the hallway before the general was able to take notice of me; and in that time I heard a world of cursing from impatient young officers over the dreadful conditions that existed everywhere. From them I learned that these new regiments would waste no time in hastening forward to make themselves masters of Quebec; nor could I help hearing that General Thomas, commanding all the forces in Canada, was lying blind and raving in Chambly, dying of smallpox, so that it was only a matter of hours before General Sullivan must succeed to the position.

When at last I was taken before him, I found him tall and florid, with tufts of hair sticking out in front of his ears, so that he looked like a good-natured lynx. From the set of his lips I judged him to be stubborn; and it was written all over him that he was determined to be well liked, even though he had to kick people into liking him. He was plainly elated, too, by the importance of the position in which he now found himself.

“Who’s this?” he asked, mopping his sweaty red face. “What’s the trouble here?”

The lieutenant spoke for me. “This was the man in charge of those ship timbers, General.”

“Ah yes!” the general said. “I remember it now. Well, sir: what’s your idea, interfering with ship timbers that we might make into a finished vessel and use for our own purposes?”

I liked nothing about him—neither his enormous self-satisfaction, his genial condescension, nor his catlike face; but since he was a general and I without any military rank whatever, I had to be more than civil. “Sir,” I said, “I’m a scout under General Arnold. I’m a sea-captain, so General Arnold gave me orders to get the timbers to Crown Point where they could be used in case of a retreat.”